1 /5 No Name: My personal experiences have left me with serious medical trauma & permanent, lifelong damage to my body, & when Ive tried to report these things, Im ignored. Patient Relations has ignored everything Ive sent to them. Because of my health issues, Im forced to keep going to appts where these kinds of issues continue to recur because the hospital & staff arent interested in feedback to improve their systems/how the patients are treated. I have tried to report: Lying about information in my medical file; Causing permanent damage to my body through surgical procedures that they were ill-prepared to perform. Communication issues, everything from a provider/staff member being egregiously rude (I really can not emphasize enough how rude most medical professionals are to their patients. The forums online would have you believe that staff are only rude to rude patients, but a lot of the time, patients are rude to rude staff because we are in pain, seriously ill, & being treated contemptuously) to ineffective communication between depts. impacting patient care.
Upon doing further research into how hospitals & providers deal with patient complaints, I have found a lot of reports from medical staff talking online about how they typically ignore these things. I have read a lot of discussion threads where they are openly complaining about the patients who complain, disregarding their experiences, & lumping all of them into a category of being a difficult w/ no valid concerns to address. I understand that providers & hospitals do get some unreasonable complaints, but this admittance, on just about every thread you can find online with medical staff discussions, shows that those working in the medical field truly do not care about what their patients think/feel. They admit to throwing away the complaints & ignoring the majority of them.
I implore everyone w/ negative experiences w/ their doctors & hospital systems to file complaints. It may feel futile, but the more complaints they receive, the less they will be able to ignore us. Also, do file with these other agencies.
-Your insurance directly
-Washington State Department of Health
-Washington Medical Commission
-Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner
-Washington State Medical Quality Assurance Commission
Please write reviews, so other patients can be informed about your experience w/ particular doctors/medical staff & medical facilities.
A lot of us turn to reviews to help inform our decisions on what to purchase, who to see for a service, etc. Not enough people report their bad experiences. Please take the 15 minutes to write about your experience & publish it. I have seen a lot of providers that have nearly 5-star reviews online, that have been some of the worst doctors that I have encountered, & I have heard stories of how bad they are by others in the community, but this isnt getting reported online, so their numbers remain deceptively high.
I also implore medical staff to remind themselves that the patients are the ones in the position of suffering, & you are in the position of compassion. If you are not interested in compassionately caring for your patients, please do us all a favor & change your career path. If you are so burnt out by the system you are working in, you need to stand up for yourself & your co-workers, & dare I say your patients, & try to implement change. If you are so burnt out that you cant provide compassionate care, then you need to voluntarily excuse yourself from working in a position that requires that as a basic feature of the job function.