The Power of The Internet

After three days of worry and lost sleep someone listened. Do you know why they listened? The Internet. That's the only thing that made an impact on the fiasco that has been the mistreatment of a patient at St. Joseph's Hospital in Parkersburg, WV.
This morning I called the hospital to speak to the patient advocate. Every hospital has one or two or more. The hospital wants you to think this job relates to protecting the patient when in reality it's to catch any problems that might result in a law suit for the hospital.

LPN Nurse Pat Mulvaney came into the room last evening and said to the patient " You chose to have this operation. You didn't have to have it so you need to just get used to the pain and quit complaining".
Thank you Nurse Ratchet. You have no right to make a judgement like this on a patient in your care!
I had had enought of the unprofessional and the abuse being heaped on my sister.
A few days ago I tried to contact the doctor on this case to discuss the pain management. No response. Nobody wanted to help. I spoke with two supervisors and the floor manager and a few of the nurses. No body was interested. Nobody cared.
Today while talking to the patient advocate then later when the nurse manager called I mentioned that I had placed my complaints on the internet.
VOILA! The doctor called.
We talked, he apologized for all the unreleived pain from this surgery. After a lengthy conversation, I found at the end of this conversation his real reason for calling.
"One other thing I wanted to bring up", he says. Someone has posted on the internet about this. The hospital is worried that people will get the wrong impression about the hospital and the care there".

Ah ha...now I see why I was contacted. Nobody cared until they realized that the internet was being blasted with this story. Now everyone is concerned about the patient? I think not. As usual it's about the hospitals income. It's always about the income potential.
I told the doctor I posted that information and of course I knew he already knew who did it and this was the call to fix it.
I told him I wasn't afraid of slander nor libel. Nothing I said was untrue. What could he say? He tried to get me to say I would remove it and I knew that's what he wanted to hear.
I refused. I told him maybe the hospital needs to reeducate their nurses on pain management. It was too late for my sister. She was being discharged tomorrow. Maybe some other patient could benefit from this experience. Personally, I would never use this facility. Too risky. Too late. Too many didn't care.
I'm done with it all. This will stay posted. I must say this in closing. I don't think all the fault lies with the doctor. He depended on the nurses to give the pain meds. I told him that was the problem. If she had had a "drip of Dilaudid" she wouldn't have had to be at the mercy of a bunch of heartless ignorant non caring nurses!
I'm done now.