For a little background, a few months ago I had a hockey injury and went to the ER where I received the most traumatizing "care" I have ever had from medical professionals. A week or two after the fact, I posted about it to this blog in the post A little injury, a lot of trauma.... I tweeted the post to Park Nicollet, the medical group the hospital belongs to and as a result I got a call saying they'd look into it. The process of sharing was cathartic and as my hand healed, my mind was able to heal too, at least enough to stop replaying the incident over and over in my head.
Until this weekend.
This weekend I got a letter from the hospital telling me that they'd looked into my care and found it to be "appropriate". In fact they took two whole pages to spell out just how wrong I was in my assertion that I was mistreated. I will attach the full letter but here are some highlights of why I'm crazy and the trauma was all my fault, if it existed at all:
- "While we can understand your frustration with your visit, it appears the care you received was reasonable and appropriate." This made my stomach drop. I had a panic attack and was treated like a psychopath criminal. If the "care" I received was "appropriate"?? Then why does it still haunt me? And in what way do you "understand" if this is your conclusion?
- "The longest you were by yourself was approximately 14 minutes." So apparently leaving somebody with a diagnosed mental health condition alone with no idea when you're coming back, when they are in the midst of a panic episode, is ok if it's *only* 14 minutes. My students aren't allowed to be more than 7 minutes late for work, but leaving a scared woman alone for 14 is FINE.
- "...your social worker had minimal contact with you due to your lack of collaboration... your social worker states you were crying and hard to understand." OMG, so sorry to have inconvenienced a social worker with my crying. Couldn't have been because I was scared and she was making me feel like I was over-reacting, oh but wait!
- "Your social worker ... recalls offering several statements of support, but recalls the helpful information was not accepted by you." The social worker claims she said "supportive" things, where I felt she said accusatory things, so just believe her over me, then it's all hunky-dory. I just can't even with this one.
- If these truly are your standard practices for dealing with somebody who you determined was "a danger to yourself and others", then you've messed up from the get go. Also, that is not listed on my discharge papers. Why not?
- Speaking of my discharge papers, the letter failed completely to address the lack of information I was given at discharge, including never having been told the dosage of the medication I was forced to take.
- The note does mention the security staff did the right thing, I agree. I have no beef with the two security dudes. The letter does not mention the nurse lady who got all up in my face.
Basically I got an ass-covering, victim-blaming, totally BS letter. And it wrecked my otherwise fantastic weekend. Thanks Park Nicollet Methodist! I will never, ever, ever visit you again. And I will warn all the people I can about this experience. I may have a mental health problem, but I'm human and I will take my business to a place that treats me with dignity.
PS: fuck you, Park Nicollet.
You tell 'em. Sounds like our local hospital where I've instructed Gene NEVER to take me if I had an emergency.
ReplyDeleteThere should be like Yelp for hospitals so we can all avoid these places.
DeleteWould it help at all to have your psychiatrist write a letter of complaint? Would your psychiatrist do it?
ReplyDeleteWe've never had an experience like this, and haven't had any ER experiences that involved mental/emotional conditions, but even our experience has been that ER personnel are THE WORST at actually listening to patients or those who accompany them. I think what they really want are the big dramatic trauma cases with an unconscious or at least helpless patient.
I do wonder what types of personality make some people want to go into medicine but then just not even care to deal with certain medical situations.
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