PM Pediatric Urgent Care — Attraction in Clifton

I came in with a 5 day old baby with yellow green discharge from blocked tear ducts, having already corresponded with the baby’s pediatrician, who recommended I take a quick trip to urgent care to pick up antibiotic ointment. The attending physician took a VERY conservative approach and told me she would not prescribe the ointment, and I had to go to the emergency room. I told her they would be very inconvenient, since I had a 4 year old and 2 year old with me. Nevertheless, we went. The emergency room doctor told me that they were surprised I was referred there, that this is a cut and dry case needing a simple antibiotic ointment for the eyes, very common, and that the PM pediatric doctors concerns had an extremely remote probability of being a possible risk. It was MASSIVELY inconvenient to be sent to the emergency room with a 5 day old, a 2 year old and a 4 year old at bedtime on a Saturday night, particularly after still recovering from having just given birth. The baby’s pediatrician agreed with the emergency room doctor, that the PM pediatrics attending physician way over-reacted to the situation at hand. After a single application of the ointment, the baby’s eyes were fine. Meanwhile, I was massively inconvenienced and had to spend hundreds of dollars on an un-necessary ER visit.

Editing to add, came back (why?!) 7 months later with the same infant. Had to wait nearly 2 hours, despite google suggesting a wait time of 15 minutes. One doctor on site, taking a massively long time to see each patient, then at the pace of a tortoise filling out their charts one by one. They are so severely understaffed. Front desk person kept telling me there were “two people ahead” of me. They call multiple people ahead of me. See other reviews, this seems to be this person’s canned response when people inquire about wait time.

My infant had been in a home where THREE other people tested positive for strep and had been very sick and out of sorts for many days — the doctor tried to talk me out of testing despite the fact that I had come to PM only after receiving the diagnosis for three other people in the household at AFC urgent care in lyndhurst (which doesn’t see infants), that I should specifically take the infant somewhere because after COVID strep has been way, way worse and the protocol has changed - infants should be tested and treated with antibiotics if need be. So I had to argue with the doctor who said it was very unlikely he had it. He did the test, and lo and behold, positive. He then tried to talk me out of antibiotics. I called the baby’s pediatrician and she again said she doesn’t know what the man is thinking— they treat babies all the time with antibiotics and the complications from strep can be very bad if left untreated. The man’s bedside manner was also terrible. He walked into the room and i was discreetly breastfeeding, and it appeared to apall him. (You’re…a pediatrician?!) he nearly left the room he was so flustered, I can appreciate that he was attempting to offer privacy, it was more the general shock and disregulation with which he acted that un-nerved me. i had to explain that the baby was done and please do not go see someone else (i was there 1.75 hours already!)....

I really want to give them no stars!!!! my daughter started having UTI symptoms and was told she had to have a catheter done as she was not fully potty trained. this test was not available at her regular pediatrics, so i was recommended to go to PM Pediatrics. dreading the fact that we had to get this test done, i really prayed everything else went smoothly. i was wrong!! we came across the receptionist (asian women, sorry i didn’t catch her name) who i’m sure hated her job. when being approached by patients, she spoke to them in a rudely manner. she even told a patient waiting on line with her son to move so that i would be able to stand in front of her. i literally turned back at the mother in line as i was extremely shocked on how she spoke to her. i just feel like if you work in a pediatrics and have to deal with patients with kids like the least thing you can do is make us feel welcomed. i don’t think that’s too much to ask especially that we have kids with us. the nurse we had was probably the only one that was genuinely super nice. once the dr came in, i automatically got a bad vibe from her but decided to ignore it. once it was time to do the procedure, they had put us in a surgery looking room. she instructed for me to remove my daughters bottom to start the procedure. everything went so fast that i didn’t even realized the dr had asked a male nurse to assist in the procedure. i don’t know about anyone else but i personally thought it was extremely inappropriate to have a male assist in such procedure due to the fact that it was being done to a toddler girl. i should of said something but again everything happened so quick. i was focusing on my crying child who begged for us to stop. long story short, the dr did the procedure incorrectly and advised that we had to redo the test because “due to my child crying, she didn’t place the catheter correctly and wasn’t able catch enough urine.” in other words, she didn’t do her job correctly. my daughter literally laid in her own urine. best part was the way they man handled her to clean her, like if she was a dog. at one point the nurse had my daughters legs pulled so far back to her head with her private parts fully exposed while the dr went to clean herself up, not even my daughter. i had placed my hand to cover my daughter private parts and tried to lower her legs regardless if the nurse was still holding them. i refused to have her redo the test again. both my daughter and i left this placed horrified and in tears. i left feeling like the worse mother ever for putting my daughter through this. first and...

THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT KIDS AT ALL!!! I was there with my son and my experience was absolutely horrible. A PA was assigned to us and need to check on my son’s ears. My son was in pain and he wasn’t cooperating so she decided to call someone to help. This other person comes in the room and just grabs my son. This poor little guy started screaming, but they still cannot see. The PA decided to flush out my son’s ears. At that moment, I decided to request to see the doctor to check on him and see if that’s necessary as the poor little guy is already in so much pain. We waited for 2 hours and still was not seen by a doctor although we had a reservation. When we asked the staff why that is the case, we were told that there are many kids that are worse than my child and the doctor needs to see them first. My son was sick for 6 days with fever and cough, and these people just do not care. They gave excuses to keep us waiting and waiting. I was mad at that point because my little one was screaming and do not want to sit in that little room anymore. We asked if they treated us differently from other people and the front desk person asked us to leave. Isn’t it illegal to ask a patient to leave? Finally my son was seen by the doctor but that’s about 3 hours later than our reserved time.

Also, 5 months ago, I took my daughter to this location. She was a newborn for only 5 days. I also needed rest as I was just discharged by the hospital. We told the front desk about our situation and asked if they can give us a call 10 minutes before our turn so that we can drive there immediately. We only live 10 minutes away. We were told that’s not possible. We waited outside, and the front desk wrote down the wrong number. They could not reach me when it was my turn. When we checked if we can go in, the front desk told us that she already moved us to the bottom of the waitlist because she could not reach me and we had to wait again. They just do not care about kids at all.Also, I was being charged twice on my card for this visit. It is very ironic that this place do not have enough doctors to see patients but do have people work there to charge you twice with this kind of service delivered.

I have been to other PM pediatric before and the experience is definitely a lot better. Although this one is close to home, I will never go back to this...