3 posts tagged “midwife”

Last month Patsy Harman emailed me to see if I was interested in reading her new memoir, The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir. I was excited to receive the copy in the mail the following week but then it sat on the corner of my desk unread for several weeks. When I finally cracked it up, I was spellbound. This book is so readable, so real. I loved the highs and lows of Patsy's life, the harsh honest about her love, fear, pleasure, and pain, and the details of her experiences helping women not only in their births but through the other cycles of women's lives. This book was rich in detail and filled with the joys and sorrows women face and resonated deeply for me.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good read.

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir

Patricia Harman

Another doula in the city forwarded this letter from her client to LICH. What she describes is some awful treatment at LICH postpartum. 

January 14, 2008

Ms. Rita Battles

CEO

Long Island College Hospital

339 Hicks St

Brooklyn, NY 11201-5509

Re: Unsatisfactory Level of Care

The purpose of this letter is to notify you of my extreme dissatisfaction and disappointment with the quality of the care that I received from your nursing staff during my stay at Long Island College Hospital following the birth of my child on December 18, 2007. While I was very pleased with the care I received from my midwife and the attending physician during the birth itself and their follow-up medical care afterwards, I had a long stay in the maternity ward following the birth (from December 18-22) as a result of complications related to a post-partum hemorrhage and feel that the nursing treatment I received during that time was shockingly incompetent, verging on negligent.

My son was born at 3:12am on December 18th and was immediately rushed to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Not long afterwards I underwent a D&C as a result of a hemorrhage. Following my surgery I was left in the recovery room for over an hour waiting to be transported to the maternity ward. I was very distressed about not being able to see my son and no one was able to inform me of his status. Further, I was left in the recovery room without my glasses and could not see anything around me while I was waiting to be transported.

Around 10:45am I was finally brought to my room and a PCA sat me up in a chair. I immediately felt extremely dizzy and began having trouble hearing and seeing. I told the PCA that I was about to faint and she called for assistance. A nurse then came in and asked the PCA why she had not checked my blood pressure. When the nurse checked my blood pressure she found that it was extremely low. I was given an IV, but remained in an upright position in the chair. 5-10 minutes later I began to feel faint again and this time passed out. Following this incident, I was put back into bed and remained there until 5:00pm. During that time I asked repeatedly to be taken in a wheelchair to see my son, who I had not seen since he was sent to the NICU immediately following the birth. Sometime during that afternoon I was given pain medication with codeine which made me very groggy. After taking the medication I was told by a nurse that I could not go to the NICU in a wheelchair due to the effects of the narcotic. I had not been told this before being offered the codeine-based pain medication although I had repeatedly asked to be taken to see my son. In the late afternoon the nurse gave me permission to visit the NICU, but I then had to wait for over an hour for a wheelchair before I was actually able to see my son. I am extremely angry that no effort was made by the nursing staff to assist me in seeing my son in as timely a manner as possible. While there were circumstances beyond staff's control that delayed our meeting, the 14 hours that elapsed between his birth and when I was able to see him is totally unacceptable.

This was just the beginning of a series of events illustrating the lack of care and concern shown by your nursing staff while I was a patient at your hospital. Without going into the details of every incident that occurred during my stay, some examples of the poor quality of the nursing care I received include:

- Being left without a sponge bath for two days with blood on my legs

from the birth

- Having had diarrhea and then being cleaned by a nurse while sitting

in a bed pan containing my feces

- Waiting more than four hours for pain medication that I had

repeatedly requested

- Having no one change my bed linens for over two days despite the

fact that they were filthy

More seriously, however, were the following two incidents, which go beyond issues of an over-worked nursing staff and illustrate a gross level of incompetence verging on negligence:

1. On December 20, a nurse and a PCA came into my room to take my temperature. The PCA realized that there were no probe covers on the thermometer cart and the nurse left the room to get one. While she was gone, the PCA "discovered" a bag of probe covers and put one in my mouth to take my temperature. When the nurse returned the PCA told her that she had "found" a cover and the nurse looked at her with a horrified expression. It was at that moment that I realized that the PCA had taken a dirty probe cover out of the biohazard bag attached to the cart and put it in my mouth. Following this incident, hospital staff reassured me that no one on the maternity ward had any communicable diseases and the Nurse Manager met with my husband and me to assure us that she would be changing temperature-taking procedures whereby all dirty probes would be immediately discarded and no longer put in a bag attached to the cart. While I appreciate that this will protect other patients from having dirty probes put in their mouths, this change in procedure does not make me feel any better about what happened to me. Further, while apologizing for this incident the Nurse Manager was quite callous in her manner and tone of voice.

Further, prior to the Nurse Manager's arrival in my room my husband and I asked that the PCA remain with us until someone arrived to address the situation. The nurse station receptionist then came into the room and told me that we could not hold the PCA "hostage" and that she needed to complete her rounds on the floor (presumably taking other patients' temperatures). A heated conversation ensued and the receptionist left with the PCA. My husband then went to the nurses' station to see when someone would be coming to our room to address the situation. When he arrived at the nurses' station, the receptionist had her back to him and was screaming to a group of nurses, in the presence of members of the public, about our request for keeping the PCA where she was and called my husband a 'schmuck'. My husband and I were infuriated and later reported this incident to the Nurse Manager. We were told that the PCA and receptionist would be disciplined. My husband asked that the receptionist come to the room to apologize to both of us in person, but this never happened.

1. I received a blood transfusion early in the afternoon on December 21 and the same nurse from the contaminated probe incident told us that the blood would arrive within the hour and that I should hold off going to the NICU to feed my son. Although we wanted him to receive breast milk we understood why we needed to stay in our room. However, we later found out that the blood had been incorrectly ordered and it was not until 5pm that the blood transfusion began. The nurse in charge of the process seemed very nervous setting up the equipment and took what seemed an inordinate amount of time to begin. When the first bag of blood was finished an alarm went off indicating that the blood bag was empty. My husband went to the nurses' station to inform the nurse. She seemed flustered and left to get the new bag of blood. Two hours went by before the new bag arrived; however, the line was not disconnected. When the new bag of blood arrived, the nurse did not change the old line, but instead tried to manually flush the existing line. While she was doing this, she disconnected the line and blood literally sprayed around the room. (Two other nurses were in the room with us during this time assisting her.)

At this point, we lost all confidence in her ability and demanded someone with experience talk to us about why blood was all over the floor, the equipment, my bed linen and why there were so many air bubbles in the blood line. My husband asked to speak with the doctor who earlier in the day had asked for our written consent to perform the procedure. The doctor refused to see us and also refused our request to have an intern speak with us; he then hung up the phone on my husband. At this point I was screaming at the nurse to stop the procedure and figure out what she was doing before carrying on. One of the other nurses in the room then took over the procedure and quickly and competently changed the line. We later found out that the first nurse had worked a 16 hour shift, so it was little wonder that she could not concentrate on this task properly. It should also be noted that it took the cleaning staff two hours to come to our room and clean the blood from the floor.

I was meant to receive three bags of blood over the course of nine hours; however, by the time the second bag of blood was completed it was 1:00 am- 8 hours from the time the procedure began. I ended up declining the third bag of blood because I was too physically and emotionally drained to go through the procedure again.

My husband and I hope that you will take our complaint seriously and seek to address the significant issues with the quality of the nursing care at your hospital. Our issues with the quality of care received at LICH are not limited to a single nurse on a single day, but reflect continued failures of your system over the course of a five-day hospital stay. Being hospitalized puts a person in a very vulnerable position and it is imperative that patients have confidence in those entrusted with their care. The physical trauma I experienced during and after the birth of my child was unnecessarily compounded by the emotional trauma of my experience at LICH.

One month later as I write this letter I am still having a hard time processing my experience. This was not an easy letter to write, but I felt that it was necessary to bring my experience to your attention as I expect that it is not unique among your patients.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

cc: Joseph Chambers, MD, Chairman, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Sanford Lederman, MD, Chairman, Department of Obstetrics

Kathy Gallogly, RN, Vice President of Nursing

Wanda Hernandez, RN, Nurse Manager, Maternity

Chris Hooker, RN, Nurse Manager, Labor and Delivery

Abby Howe-Heyman, CNM, Clementine Midwifery

Stacey Rees, CNM, Clementine Midwifery

I found my Birthplan from 2002 tonight and thought I would share it in case it is useful to anyone else. We were giving birth in a hospital with a midwife in a birthing suite for the midwife clients. Everything was perfect and the staff were all so respectful. My son, August, was born July 11, 2002 at 11:21 pm weighing 8 pounds 14 ozs and 21 1/4 inches long. He was born without medications or interventions (excepting a AROM at 9.5 cm to help with a lip - it still did not dialte and the midwife had to manually move it aside to prevent damage).