I was at the ER for a kidney stone diagnosis and outpatient recommendations and had a completely fine experience considering the extreme pain I was in until I encountered this nurse. She was there to give me my discharge papers. I had told the nurse my father was not answering his phone as he was meant to pick me up (He told me he had fallen asleep, my father is a senior citizen and retired, and my ER visit kept him up for a bit and he accidentally fell asleep as it was the middle of the night that I was in the ER), and the nurse almost immediately acted rude towards me, bluntly saying "I'm (as in me, the patient) independent (I don't know what that term means, I had to search it online), this hospital is not responsible for your ride, you can try Uber or Lyft" in a sort of raised tone of voice. I live in a small town, and when I told the nurse those phone apps wouldn't work here, she just repeated what she had said but with a meaner tone of voice.
I recall the on-call doctor that had diagnosed me with kidney stones saying I could stay in the lobby for the morning if my father didn't get back to me, but the nurse implied I would eventually be removed from the waiting room if I was there for too long, which I found strange. When I said "I'm going to have to leave the lobby?" She explained that I should have had a plan to leave to begin with since I arrived there in the first place, even though I was there for extreme pain from kidney stones as an emergency in the middle of the night. I was let go into the lobby where I was continuing to try to contact my father.
I was told by the ER doctor I could stay in the lobby until I got a ride, and the male nurse I talked to while being treated in the ER said "We'll get to that when we come to it" regarding getting a ride home if I needed one and my father wasn't available, as I had asked him. He meant it in a sympathetic way and wanted to help if he needed to. I had no feeling I was in a rush or in fear of being removed from the ER or the hospital in general, prior to this nurse's actions.
I saw in the lobby that there was the male nurse that had helped me while I was getting diagnosed with kidney stones. He had told me prior he would be willing to help if I was having trouble getting home, so I went over to talk to him.
I had asked him for any advice regarding getting home, and as we started to discuss it, the nurse came fast-walking back out, looked at me, and said in a very accusatory voice, "IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?", she said it again, and I was just sort of in a panicked emotional state and also not a great emotional state generally due to the pain I had been in, so I said (not yelled, I said it in a normal speaking voice) "Is there a reason you're being a bitch?". It wasn't a nice thing to say, but I was exhausted from the ER visit (I had vomited due to the pain), and I was stressed due to my father not responding to my phone calls and texts, and I wanted to get out of the hospital. The nurse suddenly yelled at me continually, repeatedly saying I had to go, and forced me to walk to the edge of the road with a security officer, where cars come into the hospital. I was given no warning regarding using vulgar language towards staff, she immediately made me leave. I don't consider that reasonable.
She had said she was going to call the police (not the security officers at the hospital, but as in the actual police) if I didn't leave right away. I don't know if that's standard hospital protocol to do that, but I don't think that's warranted to threaten that, considering I had been there for extreme pain due to kidney stones, all I had done was swear (which I immediately apologized for once the nurse started yelling at me), and only just served to escalate the situation even further. To me it shows a total lack of compassion given my situation, which the nurse knew about, since she was the one who discharged me. I had left the hospital lobby and was standing under the awning by the time the security officer had found me. There was a way this nurse could have told me to leave since I had sworn, but the way she did was very stressful, humiliating, and aggressive. The nurse was not polite about it whatsoever, which contradicts what she wrote in her report completely.
About 2 minutes after leaving the hospital, another security officer showed up to where I was with the other officer (He was wearing glasses, the first officer wasn't), and didn't seem to know why I was in this situation. I talked to him about what had happened and explained I had kidney stones, and he told me he had them before as well and how painful they were. Neither security officer was rude to me or unreasonable and I apologized to them for the weird situation as I got driven home by a police officer. It began to rain right as I got home, meaning I would have been stuck in that if I never got a ride. I don't think that's needed even if I had sworn. I think allowing me to stand under the awning at the entrance, even if it is technically hospital property, would have been reasonable if that had happened.
I was forced to stand at the literal road entrance to the hospital in the dark at about 4 AM because I was forced to leave the total premises of the hospital, and I was still without a ride home, but I thought of calling the non-emergency police line for police, who I called explaining my father wasn't responding to calls at my house, and the police sent a car to the entrance and I was able to thankfully get home without further issue. My father had woken up by the time I got to the road, and had to explain to him what happened.
I understand my conduct towards this member of hospital staff could have been better, but I believe her actions almost from the start were not needed, and her actions at the end were absolutely uncalled for. Up until that point, I had been polite and cordial with every staff member during my ER visit. I have been to this hospital many times in the past without any issue with staff. This nurse had a very rude demeanor from the start of me talking to her.
I do not know why she acted like this, as I am not sure if she thought I had an ulterior reason for saying I couldn't get a ride home. It was very odd. Her coming back out and being extremely aggressive and accusatory very soon after releasing me to the lobby just caught me off guard and led to me saying what I did just out of emotional distress. I apologize for that.
This nurse wrote in her report that I told her that the hospital needed to get me a ride home. I absolutely did no such thing whatsoever, I did not ever expect the hospital to provide me a ride home or offer me a ride home. I was told from the start that they don't do that, even from the EMTs that brought me to the hospital. The nurse's report of my interaction with her is almost completely untrue, and feels slanted to make me seem like I was entitled and belligerent, and that she was completely calm and reasonable, which was not exactly the case.
The report she wrote that I can access on the MyChart patient portal, as I said, is almost entirely inaccurate. She describes me as somebody who basically threw a temper tantrum and demanded the hospital get me a ride home (I did absolutely no such thing, I know this hospital does not provide rides home), she says I said the F-word (I didn't use that word), and says that I refused to leave (I did not; when she yelled at me to leave, I was panicked and asked her why she was making me leave over that, and apologized for saying it).
The only accurate things I saw in her report were me being frustrated that my father wasn't getting back to me, going into the lobby, saying the "B word" to her, and then leaving. She did not wait 10 minutes to come back into the lobby; I was there for about 3 minutes at most, and she fast-walked in and said "IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?". She did not politely ask me if I needed help as she self-describes doing in the report. Since this was in the lobby of the hospital, I am guessing cameras may have recorded my actions as well as hers; it would not show what she said to be accurate to her report, if the footage was looked at.
I have filed a complaint with the hospital and nursing board, and I also filled out a form requesting an amendment to my record that the nurse wrote which was inaccurate. Is there anything I can do here besides file a complaint and request an amendment to her record of the incident?
What would constitute something legally actionable in a situation like this? I'm guessing there's no quantifiable damages because nobody got hurt and I was technically discharged already at the time this happened? What about if in the future a doctor/nurse sees her record and I'm treated differently? That's my biggest concern from this. I don't really want to sue anybody and embarrass myself by wasting a lawyer's time asking about this, I just want the record to show I dispute what she wrote in the record. Thank you in advance for reading this long story.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét