UNC Ambulatory Care Center — Local services in Chapel Hill

edited At first I gave this clinic 5 stars. However, I received the letter about the investigation after my complaint. I had issue with 1 person, the nurse who said it was anxiety. They didn’t find any wrongdoing and basically called my husband and I liars. I’ve been in medicine my entire adult life and my husband is a detective. Long story short is this: all I wanted was an apology and the termination of that nurse and they chose to do the wrong thing. Well, I won’t let this slide. Don’t have surgery here because if they hurt you they’ll just lie about it and invent a twisted version of the story. Dr. Kamath is an amazing surgeon, but he’s not going to hold your hand after your surgery so remember that if you go to the ACC.

I. had a very bad experience here, but I’m giving them 5 stars. Let me tell you why: bad things can happen, that’s the risk a patient takes with surgery. What matters is how it was handled. I’m happy with my overall care. Here’s the story:

I walked in and was greeted by friendly staff. Registration was so sweet to me. My pre-op team was sweet and did an amazing job.

Anesthesia was perfect. I loved them. But, I had a severe complication. Now this complication can happen to anyone and is not concerning to me. No one did anything wrong (I work in medicine). However, it resulted in the collapse of my left lung and partial collapse of my right lung. This is a rare side effect from the nerve block I had. I knew it could happen.

As you can imagine I woke up in severe respiratory distress. This is where things go poorly for me.

I’m waking up. I can hear & see, but I can’t talk. The anesthesiologist walks by and asks how I’m doing the nurse tells him I doing good. He says he’ll be back soon. He can’t see me. So she lied to him because I was having a hard time. Which delayed intervention.

My husband comes in and starts telling her that I’m having breathing problems. She tells him it’s anxiety. The respiratory distress was so bad he said it looked like someone was shocking the right side of my chest.

I wake up enough to tell her myself. She then comes over takes off my oxygen mask, leaves me flat, does not assess me and tells me it’s anxiety. I’m scared at this point. My husband comes over to sit me up. I keep telling her (in a whisper breathless between words) and my husband keeps telling her. Again, she insists that it’s anxiety, flatly tells me to slow my breathing down and uses my oxygen saturation to justify her insistence that it’s anxiety.

Now we can get into the science of why oxygen saturation isn’t always a good way to measure cellular respiration, but let’s just say- it doesn’t matter if the patient is having to work very hard to breathe. Anyway, my anesthesia team returns, as they said they would; they get down to work with interventions, labs and arranging EMS transport to the big hospital. The care they gave me was appropriate and performed with genuine concern and kindness. I wouldn’t received care sooner and suffered less has she listened to me or even be halfway competent.

This is why they get 5 starts: They started an investigation even before my complaint. No one denied what happened to me. They all apologized and I’ve received phone calls from all kinds of people. Nursing managers, anesthesiologists, mangers of the facility and everyone. No one tried to lay blame on others or say I was exaggerating. They took full responsibility.

The only satisfactory result is her termination and hopefully the loss of her nursing license. The incompetency and cruelty require no less than her never being able to harm another...

I am disappointed to read some of the other reviews of this facility. We were registered right away, kept updated as to the steps involved in the process and from the pre-op nurse, the anesthesiologist, the doctors, the post op nurse all the way around, we were treated with courtesy and respect. My father (the patient) kept saying how well he was being treated (even before the meds kicked in). He is no, shall we say, a fan of medical care so for him to be commenting about how pleased he was shows that this was a positive experience. He was even more effusive with the praise when he was in post-op recovering but I will ascribe a certain amount of that to the meds he was given. Regardless, I appreciate the care and concern that was shown to my father by all that we...

Leaving this review after an excellent experience at UNC ACC. Before my daughter's surgery I was concerned about the bad reviews this clinic has, but everything went really smooth. Dr. Damason, Dr. Painter and his Anesthesiology Team, Nurses, Receptionists were very attentive, professional and compassionate. They explained procedure to my daughter in an age appropriate way, made it look fun and kept her calm all the time, and that was reassuring for us as parents. It's a well organized place and attention was what you...