UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital — Local services in Los Angeles

Extremely bad experience at UCLA Mattel childrens pediactric intensive care unit (PICU)

Our son was admitted to UCLA Mattel PICU on the 30th of Dec 2023 and was there for 46 days. We found his overall care for the duration that he stayed there extremely poor across all facets. The list is long but I will list a few points which should NEVER occur in an ICU. 1)There is no respect for the patient. When our son was dying and they were trying to resuscitate him, 2 nurses were conversing around him as if it was a show and one of them was laughing!!! 2) General callousness and negligence is pervasive throughout the PICU. Examples include forgetting to give medication for allergies, letting the patient continue to bleed for days on end, and increasing infection chances by placing the sucking tube wherever they wanted. 3)The doctors themselves kept changing every week with no passdown or plan of continuity so that actual progress could be made. None of the doctors bothered to read the comments and notes about the patient and every time we had to tell them what had been done so far and what had worked. 4) Most of the residents and fellows were incompetent and grossly negligent and usually provided atleast one nugget of false information which we had to correct. In the worst cases they moved decimal places for drugs which if given at those doses would have been fatal and should be punishable as a homicide! 5) The environment was very unprofessional. The general scene outside the PICU was party like with nurses laughing and making jokes as it it was a bar and not a PICU. Everywhere on the UCLA campus there are signs of CICARE where they extol how UCLA cares for the patient and respects them. What a hoot!! 6) The general attitude among doctors and nurses is very very negative to begin with and they treat you as if you are already dead with no hope. No one was rooting for our son or celebrating his small victories. The negative attitude of the doctors was exemplified in their decision to tell us that our son was as good as dead just 4 days into treatment and to prepare for his death! 7) No attending doctor was willing to take responsibility or care for the patient. They were waiting for their turn to end so that they would be done with him. The attending doctors were least interested in treating the patient and making him well. In fact most of them never even bothered to check him fully and see him for the human being that he was. 8) The attending doctors themselves are very young with little to no experience in handling cases like ARDS that our son had. Their method of treatment was based on frivolous experimentation rather than logic, experience (which they did not have) and empathy. 9) There was no teamwork. Each doctor at the beginning of his period was only interested in pushing his agenda without bothering to work with the previous doctor with the goal of curing the patient. 10) The general callousness of doctors is transmitted like a bad disease to the nurses who are overall generally negative and have no empathy or will to try and help cure the patient. 11) There was no humanity or empathy present in any of the doctors and most nurses. Most of the nurses wanted to make our son “comfortable” by drugging him so that they could enjoy their time in the PICU and wouldn't have to do any work. 12) Considering that UCLA is a research hospital, the fellows were not uptodate on the current research on ARDS which I had to provide them with! 13) Everything done was about the money. Any benefit to the patient was accidental and unintended. Everyday, doctors from all specialties would make umpteen unnecessary rounds just so that they could bill us...

Left wanting to cry. The nephrologist Dr. Yadin has allowed her ego get in the way of doing her job and being a good Dr. I don't question if she's a good Dr., I bet she is. But her ego is keeping her from being able to even be the Dr she is capable of being and desperately needs to be. She didn't listen to anything we were trying to say. She would cut us of three words into a sentence and disregard what we were saying or respond to what she assumed we were going to say. She would tell us our child was not having the symptoms we know she is having that we tried to say she was having but was either cut off or it was ignored completely. She told us fever was in way a symptom of kidney issues and that is not true. She told us our child's kidneys were normal healthy working kidneys without any blood work to go off or even looking at the ultrasound that showed there was an issue. I am blown away by our experience and was expecting so much more from everything we have always knows about UCLAs hospital and Dr.s. We spoke to another pediatric nephrologist through a family friend over the phone. Just to clarify a few things because we are so worried and left so confused on what to do now after being told by Dr. Yadin that there is no problem and it's not kidney related. The Dr we spoke with just over the phone said from the ultrasound report and the symptoms he advised us to immediately take our child to the ER and disregard Dr. Yadins beyond irresponsible conclusion. And immediately report her for medical malpractice if indeed something is seriously wrong. That's the last thing we want to do. All we want is a Dr. who cares enough to listen and look before thinking they know if there is not a problem. It might not matter to her if she is wrong but this is our child and her life and well being is our number...

Back in Feb 2022 my newborn less than two months old had a slow deterioration from being strong and robust to looking almost lifeless from her weakness and lethargy. For two nights she would not (we later found out could not) drink more than a half ounce of milk. We went to the ER 3 times in middle of the night, and were actually admitted twice. At UCLA mattel I was completely numb from the trauma of watching her go through so many tests. After a few days of inconclusive results, Dr Ishminder Kaur noticed a very subtle change in my baby's pupils. Her meticulous physical exam, essentially a lost art in today's generation, led to the diagnosis of infant botulism and the trigger was pulled on delivering the lifesaving anti-toxin. I will never forget Dr Kaur, who is by far the most astute physician I have ever met. I am also so grateful to the kind and gentle nurses and medical team who saved her life and treated us with...