Thursday, January 07, 2010

UMC Hospital In Las Vegas

I don't know how many people ahve heard about this woman who went to the emergency room at UMC and didn't know she was pregnant. She waited in the E.R. for several hours complaining about severe abdominal pain and when the other patients saw how much pain she was in they were telling the staff they she could even go in before them. After several hours and not getting seen, she couldn't take the pain anymore and went to Valley Hospital's Emergency room where the same exact thing ahppened...so she went home thinking the pain would go away...2 hours later she delivered a dead baby at home and her husband called an ambulance. Now UMC is under investigation.

I know first hand how bad the staff in the Emergency room at UMC is. A few years ago I went to my personal Doctor with a 104 temp and bad coughing and just really bad pain throughout my entire body. He gave me paper work to take to the ER at UMC and said they would call a doctor that worked at my doctors office who was on call there at that time and get me seen right away. But when I got there and showed them the paper she told me that I needed to hold onto the paper until I was seen in the back by a doctor and the wait time was a few hours. My temp had gone up to 105F and she gave me 2 tylenol and when I told ehr I hadn't been able to keep anything down she said either take them or she would tell the nurse in the back I had refused the tylenol.

I took them and sure enough 10 minutes later I vomited them right back up. She just looked at me and said nothing. I had a plastic vomit container in my lap because I was in too much pain to keep walking to the bathroom, so she knew everytime I vomited which was every 15 mintes for the 8 hours I was in the waiting room. I had been sick for 2 weeks but it got to be so bad I finally went to the doctors office.

When I was finally called in the back to see an actual doctor, I gave her the paperwork my doctor had given me and she called the doctor and he was very upset I had waited for over 8 hours to get seen. He told her what tests he wanted ordered and when she went to do the paperwork I heard on eof the other doctors asking who the hell ordered all these tests...She told him that my doctor who sent me here did. He just shook his head.

I was put on an IV, chest x-rays were taken, blood was taken and I was put on oxygen and then given a breathing treatment and after 6 more hours in the back...I was told that I had Pnuemonia and The Flu and one of my lungs was half way filled with fluid and that's why I was having such a hard time breathing. If I had waited one more day I would have needed a chest tube.

I learned a lesson that day.....I will never again go to the ER at UMC unless I call an ambulance because their staff up front as asses. The actual medical professionals in the back treating you are nice and they do what they are suppossed to but the people up front who have no real medical training are the ones who determine who gets seen next.

As many people that go to the UMC ER, you would think they would have more than 45 beds, because at any given time there are 80 or more people in the waiting room.