Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center — Local services in Happy Valley

Some good, some not so good. Often times I was left very confused. There were mostly fantastic nurses that took extremely good care of me. There were one or two who were a bit difficult to understand and/or relate to. One nurse chose not to acknowledge my presence as I was not her "assigned patient" and would only attend to the other patient in the room. Oh, how I longed for private rooms again. There was one in particular (not on my floor) who was rather nasty, refusing to accommodate a patient who was obviously very much in pain if it meant giving up even a modicum of power in her own little fiefdom. An event requiring too much to go into here.

The menu, or lack thereof, took a bit of getting used to, but the desserts were excellent, especially the chocolate chip cookies, which I highly recommend. I wasn't crazy about the early hour that the cafeteria closed, however. My surgeon was absolute perfection. I can't imagine having a more concerned and attentive physician. After an incident at a rehab sent me back to the ER, an MRI was necessary. It took four (4) attempts over that many days before an anesthesiologist went so far above and beyond that I still marvel at his determination to get past the confusion and red tape to get it done.

There were a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected, I suppose. I was not at all happy about the "bums rush" to get me out of the hospital and into a rehab situation, regardless of where I might be sent. I was given the impression that if I didn't leave that day that my insurance coverage would cease and I would be charged for every little thing from that point on. Perhaps I misunderstood, as did my husband, and we are still unsure what was, or was not, meant. I do definitely have something to say about Kaiser's choice of rehabilitation facilities. I have now been sent to two, and my mother to four; each worse than the last. I strongly suggest that the persons who are in charge of placing hospital patients into rehab facilities should actually visit those facilities, at least those in the Portland metro area, and be aware of what kind of hell holes they may be choosing for their patients. Unfortunately, I was sent to one that didn't even have a proper hospital bed for me, nor a door for the restroom, which was visible from the hallway. By the way, it was from this facility that the incident occurred requiring me to return to the ER. The only good thing I have to say about that place is that the nurses were wonderful "Aunties" and the food was even better. The night nurse in charge of distributing medication, however, was understandably rattled when trying to accommodate the patients on two separate floors with no assistance. That being said, one very late night, I ended up trying to calm her down instead of her delivering the medications needed by us all. She ran out of my room exclaiming that her duties required more than just one nurse and yet management insisted that she do it all alone and that was why she couldn't "keep a husband or a boyfriend" because, despite all her attempts to prevail, the job was crushingly overwhelming. A bad situation all the way around. That facility should know it's limitations and not accept patients who had just received back surgery without the proper accommodations required; i.e., a proper working hospital bed. It may be a fine place to recover from drug addiction or possibly a broken leg, but definitely not a place for a patient attempting to recover from back surgery.

Kaiser is not responsible for the ambulance service but I would like to mention that the ambulance driver was curt and most unfriendly. He even demanded that I turn over my plastic water bottle because he couldn't allow water in the back of his ambulance. I sometimes wonder what he'd say to injured patients whose blood and other bodily fluids dripped upon "his" ambulance floor. My ER doc was efficient and most pleasant. It made a difficult situation that much easier to endure.

Kaiser Sunnyside is now old, with many things that need...

The emergency room is a joke at Sunnyside, I even had a traveling nurse. Tell me that if he had to go to a hospital, he would never go to a Kaiser hospital ever that says a lot too. I was put in curtain room I guess it’s called a observing area overnight not one time was I asked if I would like a glass of water, if there’s anything that I need, I was given seven bags of IV antibiotics about 10 different pills have not had anything to eat in Seven hours and they gave me a yogurt now when you take an antibiotic, aren’t you supposed to eat with it I was given a yogurt. Then the next day they were giving me more medicine and they reached for a water that I was given over 12 hours earlier. Are you kidding me? I actually was an emergency a week before for my infected wound and they let me leave the facility without bandaging the wound. Oh really I have a bacterial infection in the wound so I had to go back again a week later that is total neglect that is suing material all the things that happened to me while I was in there. The list could go on and on I’m actually finally a complaint maybe taking it much further I don’t know. I also learned the reason they don’t have appointments available for their patients is because they don’t hire more people because the employees they have now don’t want to give up their overtime extra pay and that’s why you have to wait weeks and weeks to actually get into a specialist or weeks and weeks before you get a surgery because they want that overpay instead of Kaiser being a responsible medical place and hiring enough employees to take care of their patients I had a nurse tell me today pretty much Kaiser run like a gym the more people they can get the merrier they don’t care if there’s equipment or people to take care of you. They just want your money. Oh there you go so I went from an emergency room to the observing room area And in about two hours later at 11:30 at night here comes the lady for my credit card to pay the bill for what? you haven’t even really helped me yet a yogurt I haven’t really received any service as yet, but you want your money now. The emergency doctor had told me some things that they were going to do to help take care of my foot the following morning. He said well we had a couple patients come in in the nighttime one with a stroke and then two others so we weren’t able to continue taking care of your needs. Why was an observatory room when you guys never checked my foot I told two people my foot is spreading rash and swelling up more and all I got was will let the doctor know we let the doctor know that was it. Nobody else checked it. Nobody lifted up the blanket to look at it the doctor never looked at it. I’m extremely grateful that I have Kaiser PPO/added choice because I’m out and it’s so funny because everybody will say oh you know it’s Kaiser. What do you expect? What do you expect its kaiser did you expect to get service? It’s Kaiser do they really help you nope it’s Kaiser I have a friend that works in medical field said you have a malpractice suit on your hands right now for all the things that they neglected to do for you. Especially when they let me go a week ago with a wound that actually goes all the way down to the bone of my foot and they did not bandage yet. I even went over to the Tualatin facility to the nurse treatment on my way home to get it bandaged and they were appalled and could not believe it either they’re like are you kidding me? They let you leave the emergency room With four bacterial infections bleeding that’s another thing. The lady in Tualatin actually washed my shoe because it was covered in blood because Sunnyside let me leave without covering up my wound no wonder I ended up back in the hospital in emergency...

I was being admitted for sepsis after being sent back home 24 hours earlier because they refused to admit me until my blood culture came back positive- despite how desperately ill I was with rigors from my infected porta-cath site! After waiting in the ER waiting room for several hours, after they called my name, I was dropped off just inside the door of my designated ER room & left sitting in a w/c, with no gown (for over 7 hours), no assistance up on the gurney, no blanket- I had severe chills & no call light to even call for help for well over an hour! After I’d been there for over 4 hours, I was told there stillwasn’t a room available to admit me into, upstairs so I’d be stuck in the ER, on the gurney I was on, until at least 5 AM. So I asked the nurse if someone could find the remote for the TV for me so I could watch it to pass the hours away….The nurse rudely told me she barely had time to put my IV in & didn’t have time to be bothered by looking that!! I heard from everyone about their long hours and understaffing! They finally started treatment of my sepsis with IV Vancomyosin 4 hours later & 10 min into it I began having an adverse anaphylactic reaction! It’s called Red-man syndrome because your face & torso turn bright red with severe itching starting from the top of your head & going down your chest, abdomen & back (which you are in agony over because you can’t reach it) & a terrible feeling of shortness of breath, panic & restlessness! My BP was 168/112 & Heart Rate 136 (both extremely high)& since I’m an retired RN myself and no one had come to answer my call light for HELP for OVER 30 minutes later, I shut the IV pump off myself! Then a nurse stuck her head in my door to say we finally have a room ready for you upstairs (she wasn’t even there to answer my call light) & I said help look at my vital signs and I’m itching madly all over! She said, oh that’s because you’re standing up! I said are you out of your mind? I’m having a reaction to this antibiotic. Then she looked at me and said , “oh yes, your face is bright red! Stay right there, I’m going to get the doctor! I couldn’t see my face. I couldn’t see my face because there’s no mirror in the room. All I knew was, something felt desperately wrong and my hunch was it was the IV antibiotic! Next, they rushed me to a treatment room where the ignorant nurse pushed the steroid to treat the anaphylactic reaction into my IV in 3 seconds when it’s a drug that should be administered over at least 2-3 minutes, via IV push something every nurse is taught about in her pharmaceutical class!! So I had a reaction from hell that felt like being hit by a lightning bolt that started in the top of my head, ran down my spine, then bolted upward from my center of my spine over both sides of my abdomen, merging in the center of my abdomen, followed by rushing through my pelvic area- setting my privates on fire so badly, I screamed,” help I’m burning up!” Then left my body like a lightning bolt out exiting out of my feet! I was so traumatized by how socking & painful the experience was, that I couldn’t stop crying & regain my composure for nearly an hour! When I filed a grievance over this you think they would’ve considered writing off my entire co-pay, but they only wrote...