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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Ugh! New Staff!

Frustrating isn't even a word to describe it how the health care industry can be! Yes, I understand that people come and go from jobs all the time but you should at least be given someone who knows what they are doing.

What am I going on about? Quite frankly, it is my husband's new transplant coordinator. Sure, things were bad in the beginning with the last one but at least she knew what she was doing and we actually liked her before she left. Not only did we lose her but also the two main double lung transplant surgeons of the hospital. Now we are given a transplant coordinator that keeps messing up my husband's prescriptions and actually called my husband, in reply to a message my husband had left, and stated "What did I mess up now?" Okay, I believe in admitting when you are wrong but when you actually make such a statement, it means you are messing up with other patients as well.

I will grant the guy some space given that he is new to the realms of the transplant clinic. I will even go as far as to say that he must be knowledgeable to get such a position. However, any problems with medication are not possible when dealing with a double lung transplant patient. There should be a record of his medications in his profile that the new transplant coordinator can just read off and order. So, it begs to question, why does he keep getting the prescriptions wrong??

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1 Comments:

Blogger Linda S Kidd said...

I am a single lung transplant since March 1993. I also have had changeovers in coordinators, but luckily not in my physician, however my brother who was a transplant pt from 1991 did go through both coordinators and physicians. I agree that this is most unfortunate and I am happy to hear that you have not let this upset your husband's (from what I can gather here) successful double lung transplant. Now, one of the most important and significant things we are taught as a transplant patient is to know our own meds; names (and generics), what they are for, the dosages, and the times. If you were a pneumonia patient, a heart patient, or anything else you would know these things. Being a transplant patient is now the patients new life of normalcy and should be treated no differently in every area possible. This is for his/her own safety as well as his/her own level of confidence. The comment made by the coordinator, "okay, what did I do now," sounds to me like no more than an effort to break the ice and perhaps even cause you to not be so concerned. Unfortunately, it seems to have worked in the reverse here. And, that too is a very hard call to make when trying to gain the confidence and trust of so many new patients who are putting so much faith into this one person. That one person has to find a way to bring forth such a close and extreme trust from so many different personalities to include the patient's immediate family and/or care person(s). As you can see, this is difficult at least for both sides. You have to work together. Then, if you feel you have a genuine problem, then please go to the next level to complain, which in this case would be the doctor. I say this because there are so many awaiting lung transplants and to implant an unnecessary fear in them could mean so much as a life and I know no one would ever want to be responsible for this.

2:40 PM  

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