Citizens Memorial Hospital — Local services in Bolivar

I don’t even know where to begin with explaining my experience at Citizens Memorial yesterday other than to start with I hope no one ever has to experience what I did.

It started with coming to the emergency room around 5:30am. I was in intense pain from a kidney stone. After checking me in they took me back to a room that had dirty sheets on the bed. I was told to sit in the hall until the room could be cleaned. Then I was taken to the room and all my vitals were taken. The nurse could tell I was in horrible pain so she left to go get some. After 10 minutes of her never coming back to the room, I started vomiting. Because I was hooked to several cables I couldn’t leave the room to find someone so I grabbed a trash can that was full of disposed gloves and other contaminated waste.

After the vomiting ended, I took the cables off myself and was able to find a cleaning lady and begged her to find someone for me. While she couldn’t understand exactly what I needed she made contact with a group of people at the nurses station in the emergency room area.

That lady popped her head out and said they were in the middle of a shift change and couldn’t do anything for me for a while. I was shocked to say the least since I had already been put in a room and was told by the nurse that she was going to get pain medicine.

After reaching a point that I was about to pass out from the pain, I walked up to the nurses station where everyone was involved in some sort of conversation rather than tending to the patients and said I was just going to try to make it to Springfield. Instead of getting someone to take care of me, this same woman just said “Then let us take out the IV port”. Not one offer to get someone to help me. Finally another nurse walked up and said to just go back to the room and she would be right there with pain medicine.

She gave me morphine and something else. It didn’t really work but I guess it made it bearable since I was able to wait for a doctor to come in. This was the first time I was able to explain what was going on.

A cat scan was done and it was determined I had a kidney stone so he decided to admit me and scheduled me to have surgery with Mark Walterskirchen the next day.

I was moved to a room where I was taken very good care of through the rest of the day by Tyler and Cindy.

However, this morning I started having symptoms of another condition I have called Urticaria of entire body. This causes places on my body to swell with hives as well as on my face, my lips and inside my mouth and throat.

I logged into my patient portal at Cass regional to show Cindy my conditions and medications.

She said nothing could be done until the doctor got there. I ask for some nose spray because it has antihistamines in it and sometimes helps. Again nothing do I decided to just get outside and get some air.

I was told I couldn’t go outside and by this point Dr Walterskirchen was in the room. He wanted me to make a decision about going ahead with my surgery this morning or not. I told him until I could get some air I couldn’t even think about it. He said that isn’t how surgery works. I finally just told them to release me and I had a friend who was there in about 5 minutes to get me.

By the time he got me back to my place I was swelling up and at a total loss for breath. He ran in my house and got my Epi pen and...

Their ER is one of the biggest jokes! Having a disabled child already a concern, an ER is somewhere that you are SUPPOSE to go and be able to trust your care team. That is not EVEN CLOSE to what you get at CMH. In September my daughter was in ER, sedated, REQUIRED OXYGEN and was misdiagnosed with pneumonia. When I went back for something unrelated a couple weeks later, the charge nurse recognized me and asked how she was doing on medications....would’ve been great and super thoughtful HAD ANY MEDICATION/PHONE CALL BEEN MADE! Oh, I forgot to mention that they FAILED TO DOCUMENT THAT SHE REQUIRED OXYGEN! I reached out to the director or the ER, her name is Jamie, who filed a grievance “on my behalf,” and that she would look into what happened, and follow up with the patient advocate (Kim), and have her call me. I received something in the mail stating “we would have a decision soon;” that was a couple months ago. I called Jamie two weeks ago, no answer, left a voicemail, I have yet to hear back from her, I also haven’t heard a single thing from Kim. Fast forward to tonight, I get a call from a close family/friend that I need to come up there and help her with something. When I got there, she was being told that they “couldn’t get any of her medications but two and she needed to see if someone could go to her house (45 minutes one way) and pick them up and bring them back.” Her child, who is also disabled, is being flown to St. Louis Children’s Hospital tonight, and has been without her daily medications for hours now. The nurse, Josh, asked if there was anything else we could do to get her medication, I stepped out to get some water and call the pharmacy to see if there was anyway we could get them. After I made that phone call, I was made to leave for “causing problems,” for getting medication that Josh and Rhonda (charge nurse), reportedly had absolutely no way of getting.

I have never had any issues with Rhonda before tonight. I have had my fair share of issues with Josh, so much that in September, Jamie pulled him off of my daughters case as soon as he walked in the room. That didn’t stop him from trying to give her IV meds, which he walked into the room, didn’t say a single thing to me or her, grabbed the IV tubing, and tried to inject. I stopped him and asked what he was administering and was told, “what else would it be?” Also, his comment tonight that “I’m really sorry, I have no idea what I’m doing,” didn’t go over well, and when asked why he was there if he didn’t know anything he replied “they pay me to show up and be halfway attractive.” That behavior is completely unprofessional, and staff like that is half the reason this hospital is seen as a...

I had less than desirable care when I was a patient there after surgery, but chose not to post a review at that time, because although the care was subpar and compassionate was not on the spectrum, I was ok. However, it’s quite different when it’s someone else that you care about receiving horrible and unsafe care! A patient showed up in the ER with c/o CP SOA and nausea. They pull patient back do an EKG, send patient back to waiting room. Here’s the problem with this: no vitals and they didn’t hear patients hx which factors into the concern. Pt recent dx of ca, had radioactive tx. Thyroglobulin levels increased vs decreasing with treatment. Pt had thyrogen injection today. Kicker: pt has cardiac history! After getting upset that she had sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes no vitals or anyone doing a double check, Maria, house supervisor says-“we did an EKG-well get to her soon. We had a trauma” well Maria that’s all fine and dandy, I am impressed you got an EKG because at this point I questioned if that was common place, BUT you can have a beautiful EKG and still have a NSTEMI. Exactly, how do you properly get an ESI on someone without vitals? Like that’s step two of the algorithm!! 1) are they dying- no, 2) ok-what’s their vitals? It’s no wonder you can’t keep providers there! Oh! And then it was another 50 minutes before anyone came to check on patient. Readers digest version: you had a cp in the waiting room for 90 minutes with no vitals......Good grief!! I’d hate to see your door to...