I give this place 1 star only because they won't let me take it lower. My stay at St Lukes was this past week 1/12-1/15/2011, I've been in the medical field for a very long time ... I have family members in the medical field ... none of us could believe the poor quality ... I waited in the ER for 45 minutes after checking in with shortness of breath and chest pain/pressure. Once we were in the back I was tended to but there was no professionalism at all. My dr. had been notified by family before I had arrived, she's affiliated with St. Lukes, she never bothered to call, come by, nothing. I was admitted, of course, and the nurse I had on the 3rd floor was the only good part of the entire experience. We delt with everyting from medication that the nurses openly admited to forgetting to give to me .... to extremely low O2 rates ... so low that they had to give me oxygen ... but none of this was charted. I went in for a cardic cath... the nurse admitted to my family ... 5 hours after the procedure that she'd forgotten to give me my preantesthetic medication ... and was wondering if I wanted it then! they pumped me full of blood thinners when I was admitted so when they took the cath out on the floor I started to bleed ...A LOT ... so much so that 2 of the nurses had to kneel on my bed with their fists in my groin for 20 minutes applying pressure to finally get it to stop ... i know it was 20 minutes because they were complaining the whole time about how long it was taking ... then they left the bloody sheets and blankets on the bathroom floor until the next morning ... even after family members complained ... several times ... this incidence was not charted either ... Oh yes ... I forgot to mention that not only did I not have the pre-procedure little tranq that they give you .... I didn't get the other anesthetic before the procedure either ... not until the dr. had already numbed the groin area and was inserting the cath did he say ... have you given her the meds yet ... the response was ... `Oh, well no, sorry' .... OMG! .... The Cardio Dr. was thrilled about how low my BP was ... from 240/140 down to 90/45 ... but when my daugher questioned about it being so low because of the bleeding the Dr. said there was nothing in the chart about any bleeding .... The following day I'd decided that enough was enough and had to leave ... the cardio said fine ... schedule a recheck in a few weeks ... the floor nurse came in ... had me sign a discharge paper and asked if I wanted a wheel chair or to walk ... It was going to take a while for the chair ... so I said I'd walk ... he said ok ... and that was that ... I walked out of the hospital with no escort ... no help ... just on my own ... a heart patient ... with CHF and a multitude of other problems ... yet they allowed me to walk down by myself .... I know this might sound like I'm a complaining old fool ... but I just can't believe how the medical field has changed ... how they can employ people who do not do their jobs ... charting ... medications ... basic nursing skills .... Is this really what the medical profession has become? Are these the nurses of tomorrow? I look back and can say that I'm proud that I was able to practice nursing when it meant something ... when we cared about patient care ... and honesty ... and the doctors we worked beside took care of their patients .. when it wasn't all about the almighty dollar ... but about saving lives .. how very sad ... to see what it has become ... Be very careful if you have to be treated here ... and be very aware of what's going on. ...
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