Westchester Medical Center — Local services in Town of Mount Pleasant

on June 19, 2023, I had a wisdom tooth extraction at Westchester Medical Center's Dental clinic and the experience was traumatic to say the least. The resident who started the procedure (name unknown) injected the local anesthetic (4 injections). The procedure seemed to be going well until she began to extract the tooth. Immediately, I started crying because the pain was 10/10. She then injected some more anesthetic and proceeded to extract the tooth. I stopped her again, and told her that I was in pain. At this point, I was shaking in the chair and crying from pain and anxiety. She injected more anesthetic into my actual tooth (twice) and the pain was excruciating. I stopped her and told her that we either needed to come up with a different plan, or that I needed to go under. She told me that I was just "feeling pressure," and I had to keep advocating for myself to let her know that I was in fact feeling pain. She proceeded to tell me that I needed to relax and work with her. It was infuriating to hear her say this to me as I was experiencing 10/10 pain. She then injected the anesthetic into my actual tooth AGAIN, which was painfully awful, and tested the side of my gum. I did not feel the pain on the side of my gum, but I certainly felt it in my tooth. She went to extract my tooth again, and I screamed at this point with tears in my eyes because it was so painful. To note, more than 15 - 20 minutes have elapsed at this point because I kept stopping her, I was crying incessantly and shaking from the pain.

It wasn't until Dr. Weber, the attending, came that I began to feel relief. He wiped my tears, spoke to me in a calm voice, asked me my interests and spoke to me about my profession. Once the resident left the room, I asked him if he would extract the tooth for me. He told me not to worry and reassured me that I would be ok. He came back, injected the local anesthetic (in the correct place). I felt the needle, and asked him if I should have felt it because technically I should have been numb from all the local anesthetic injected at this point. He gave it a few minutes and returned. He asked me if I felt any changes in my lip, and I answered "yes." My lip became numb as it was supposed to. My lip did not become numb even after ALL the injections (more than 7 total) that she gave me. It is evident that she injected it into the incorrect location. The resident became visibly upset at this point. She said to me "I thought you said you didn't feel anything when I asked you." I responded, "I didn't feel anything on the side of my gum, but I certainly did when you injected the needle inside my tooth and I told you." She then took off her gloves, threw them in the trash, and stormed out of the room. This was terrible bedside manner and highly unprofessional of her. Dr. Weber returned to do the extraction, and she assisted him by holding my mouth open. I did not feel ANY pain going forward. Thank God for Dr. Weber. After completing the procedure, he asked the resident to suture the socket, then he left the room. The resident did not apply any gauze to the site and left me sitting there for a few minutes. I asked her if she would suture the socket, and she said there was no need to, although Dr. Weber had instructed her to do so! I was nervous about letting her suture my gum because I did not trust her at this point. She finally put the gauze in my mouth and sent me home.

. I have an excruciatingly painful ulcer on my tongue that I believe is the result of improper dental work and excess lidocaine injected into the area. I have also lost my sense of taste on the left side of my tongue (the side that my tooth was extracted from) due to possible lingual nerve damage. I have been taking 800mg Motrin daily just to get through the day and it is so painful to eat that my diet has mainly consisted of fluids for the past 7 days. Secondly, the socket is not healing properly and I am experiencing pain and soreness at the site since day 1. She should have sutured it as Dr. Weber...

I was transferred from Vassar brothers medical center (where I work in the ER) with my 16 month old son. He has a long history since birth but for the first time had seizure like activity/ syncope. My son is a wild vibrant child who doesn’t stay still and he was on fluids all day at Vassar, lethargic and sleeping all day which is way out of character. The ER DR VassarPediatrician from Vassar who were outstanding wanted him transferred to be admitted and have a full neuro work up and MRI (his primary pediatrician wanted the same as well).The ride down the ems crew were amazing and I was scared and hopeful we would get to the bottom of this. We transferred to the ER at Westchester around 6pm. I only saw a resident never an attending who wasn’t nice and didn’t care or want to hear his history. Laughed at me when I said my son is failure to thrive since birth and kept telling me he was holding his breath and he was “fine”. The er nurse told me they don’t se MRI’s which is funny but sad. My son didn’t perk up and eat and want to walk around until 9:30 pm which was 24 hours after his episode which is very out of character for him. No matter how many times I explained this wasn’t right they dismissed me. They swabbed my son for the respiratory panel because they claimed Vassar “did nothing”, when I saw the results for his flu, covid , rsv and respiratory panel which were all negative! They told me they didn’t do it so they swabbed him again! It was all negative and the residents sly answer was he probably has a virus we didn’t test for. Even though he has no sick symptoms fever or anything they kept down grading it to him having a virus which is degrading and awful as a mom to not feel heard!!! We kept waiting and waiting for the cat scan. His lactic was 3.2 at Vassar! No one gave him fluids or rechecked his lactic! He has had issues with high lactic levels since birth but no one would listen and kept saying it was a bad blood draw when it was not! I kept getting the run around about how it was a Monday night and it’s the busiest night in an ER, traumas coming in bump people waiting for scans. Oh did I mention I work in an er so I know this and only heard one trauma level 2 called. My son didn’t get his scan until 11:30 pm and we got results at 1:30 and they d/c us. I got home at 4 am with no help or answers for my son. My sons primary pediatrician and the lovely dr’s/ coworkers at Vassar were truly upset when they heard how we were treated and are getting his mri scheduled and a neuro consult. Your hospital just has a good name with nothing to back it up. Staff lack perspective and empathy, and these residents need to not be so cocky and maybe the attending should have the decency and respect to see the patient. It’s so unfortunate that pediatric patients need to always be shipped off to Westchester to be cared for it leaves the parent with no options but I will never return or recommend your hospital. It was a real let down to have had such an awful experience. While in the ER I was never offered a blanket, a drink, food anything for myself or my son I had to beg for diapers since I ran out since I didn’t plan to spend my day in the ER and didn’t have enough. A few days after our visit I got a text to do a survey. I was eager to do it except when I put my sons date of birth in it told me it was incorrect which it wasn’t! I called the number provided and was told the hospital gave the company the wrong DOB and I had to call a patient advocate. I called the patient advocate at WCMC and they were so apologetic and said they were escalating my issue and would call me back that day , and I never heard back!!!!!As providers and care takers never forget the situation can be switched in an instant and it truly isn’t fun being on the other end of care, always have compassion and empathy. I know first hand how crazy and chaotic it can be in an ER but you always take care of your patients and care!!! So disappointing! One star was too...

Labor and Delivery Worst Birth experience in my life and this is my third child Let's start with the Labor and Delivery. If you don't want to wake up months later in the middle of the night and stress out from your experience DO NOT have your baby here. You have your nurses, your OB-GYN doctors, the anesthesiologist, and the resident doctors who I will discuss first. The residents who is a doctor in training in their field under supervision, feels like they run the show and will go over their training doctor’s head. The resident doctor came into the room several times telling me that my baby would die if i didn't get an epidural. After my doctor gave the green light to wait till I was 6 centimeters. The nurses and the anesthesiologist were all pressing me to get an epidural. They also wanted me to sign off to put me to sleep if i needed a C-section and didn't have an epidural. (which I didn't) Moving forward i got an infection ( which i believe they caused) after 3 days in the hospital and had to get a C-section. Even in the last 10 mins before the C-Section you had the head of anesthesia come and try to convince me to sign off on putting me to sleep. So much more but there is too much to write

We were told by the head of the baby unit we would have 30 minutes of skin-to-skin while they were cleaning me up. My baby's agar score was great, my baby had no infection and was very alert. They took the baby away and said we couldn't do skin-to-skin and told us that my husband would be able to be with the baby in 20 to 25 minutes; it took 3 hours. the nurse told me I couldn't see my baby till the next day while i was in this crazy area which was like a cubicle set-up that they call recovery but it was smaller than a prison cell and a curtain around me. There was a patient on the right and left of the curtain.

Moving forward, I raised hell n told the nurse, I will crawl myself to my baby. Putting my mind forward and trying to move my body sooner rather than later after a C-section so i could breastfeed and be with my baby. Someone came to get me and i was able to be with my baby at least i got to breastfeed. My goodness. I'm still wondering why my baby was in the natal area at $20,000 a night with no complications. However, my baby's temperature did drop but i blame them for not allowing skin-to-skin, taking my baby away from his parents for 3 hours, and then not being able to sleep in the room with us for the first 3 nights because he was in a natal unit. I feel like they set that up to get more money When we were with our baby their temperature was great and when we left and came back at the hours we could visit they informed us our baby's temperature dropped when we left.

The postpartum section was a 4/10. The nurses were lovely but it was so cold in there that you couldn’t sleep. The day my baby was able to sleep with us in the room, it was so COLD and uncomfortable we had to cover the AC vent with blankets. (felt like the freezer) We did notify the staff but no was able to fix it. We did share a room which i don't recommend. If you want peace in your life, want to have a great experience on the birth of your child and don’t want a baby crying, crawling and running to you, (i call it crawl-run) i never knew a baby could run and crawl so fast in the middle of the night (we do the Montessori floor bed) as if they remember being taken away for hours. Do not give birth here at this WMC hospital

The first photo is some recordings on the thousand walk-ins they did, telling me my baby will die, trying to convince me on doing things I didn’t want to do. The second photo is the anesthesiologist trying to convince me to sign off on being put to sleep if an emergency occurs i said no. They said well baby can die, or become brain dead, etc… more fear talk. Last photo is my baby bundled up in the summer because it...