ANN ARBOR, MI – Following a prolonged code of her roommate, 46-year-old patient Karen Evans ranked her overall patient care experience as “below average.”
Although Ms. Evans felt that the other parts of her stay accommodated her needs, she selected “strongly disagree” for the item on nurse responsiveness. This was mostly due to her requests for a refill of ice during the code being repeatedly ignored.
The noise level during the code had been so high that Ms. Evans was forced to rank herself as satisfied “about 0-25% of the time”. Ms. Evans listed the code alarm, AED, and general “chattiness” of the code team as loud and intrusive. Even with her iPad on full volume, she still experienced difficulty hearing her Facebook videos.
She was especially annoyed when her roommate required emergent intubation and transfer to the MICU. The ventilator jostled against Ms. Evans’ bedframe as they were wheeling the roommate out and no one said “excuse me”, prompting her to rate hospital staff friendliness as “fair to poor”.
After asking to speak with a manager, Ms. Johansson instead agreed to speak with the senior resident who had run the code. In the middle of listing each of her grievances in exacting detail, the bleary-eyed resident’s code pager went off again before bolting from the room.
“Rude, just rude,” said an indignant Ms. Evans. “Whatever happened to bedside manner?”
