A nightmare for my sister, who stayed there for several weeks. We arranged all-day family coverage, but even so she received substandard care, much of which was unfriendly, often unkind, and seemingly unmoved by patient discomfort.
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She required the use of a Hoyer life to get in and out of a wheelchair, but the aides responsible for the Hoyer lift appeared to be reluctant, and more than once she was not ready for PT when they came to get her. The Hoyer procedure was physically painful for her and made humiliating by the aides' attitude. This became even more of a problem when she was returned from PT. Sitting in the wheelchair was excruciating for her, and it was imperative that she be transferred back to bed quickly, a fact we explained to the staff repeatedly. On the first day of PT, her daughter and I went out to pick up lunch and returned to find her left alone in the middle of the common area in her wheelchair, in agony and unable to get help. This turned into the pattern of her days. We were given multiple and repeated reasons why she had to be left in pain in the wheelchair, despite our pleas for assistance every day after that:
- everyone was at lunch;
- aides were there but it had to be HER aide, and she was at lunch;
- our asking for help was interfering with the nurses' ability to do their work;
- the staff was leaving for lunch but they'd be back in an hour to help her
- being in bed wouldn't help her pain anyway.
My sister got to the point where she was afraid to get into the wheelchair because of the pain she'd have to endure before she could convince someone to help her get back to bed.
One day a nurse crimped the catheter tube for a urine sample and forgot about it for several hours. My sister was in agony, feeling like she couldn't pee. Her daughter looked under the blanket and saw a tangle in the tube, and when searched out and asked, the nurse laughed and said, "Oh, that was me, I forgot I did that!" and went to get the sample and uncrimp the tube. No apologies, no recognition of the pain caused, just giggles, coming and going down the hall. A few days later my niece noticed the catheter had stopped flowing freely and was backed up almost to my sister's body. The charge nurse instructed another nurse to flush it. She ignored the order. After 5 hours my niece went to see the charge nurse, who proceeded to do it himself, all the while being watched by the uncooperative nurse, who kept saying, "but I was going to do it". Another day my sister rang for help getting changed out of soiled clothes. A staff member came in, turned her bell light off, took her lunch tray and disappeared. On checking with the nurse's station we were told that everyone was at lunch but would be back in 5 minutes. An hour later someone came.
At one point the staff refused to give my sister the medicine she required to avoid impaction, saying it was no longer on her chart. My niece had to track down the doctor herself to get permission for the drug to be reactivated on the chart. My sister still became impacted while there - twice. Both times, after begging the staff to help over several days, her husband had to force Aristacare to order an ambulance to take her to the ER. Medication schedules and scripts seem to get mixed up frequently, especially a problem with pain pills. We concluded after we got her home that the medication mix-ups caused at least some of her symptoms, which improved after we resumed organizing them ourselves.
When they washed my sister they were very rough, especially in private areas where they scrubbed as though using sandpaper. Her repeated pleas for gentleness were met with apologies, continued scrubbing, and laughter. She came home bleeding in her private areas and with the family left to heal her.
More than one staff member commented to us that they couldn't explain the institution's good reviews, because they thought the place was terrible and would never send their own loved ones there. We never will...
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