My father was placed in Kindred Hospital’s inpatient long term care unit after fighting months to regain his life back after three heart attacks, the last one leaving his heart so weak that the lower lobe of his heart is dead an unable to provide the proper amount of oxygen to keep him breathing without a ventilator.
Our first initial thought when he was placed in the long term hospital was that they would give my sixty two year old father the proper medical treatment and rehabilitation to get him back on his way to a recovery whether it be a slow one or a speedy one, we at least expected him to eventually get well enough to bring back home. Prior to his recent heart ailments, my father has had a history with heart problems due to blockages. However, he was never confined to a bed nor was he not able to get up and care for himself.
Now, a year later since that first heart attack, my father is confined to a bed inside a dreary hospital room where he has to be taken care of and can not even do the simple things he once did such as walking to the bathroom when needed, eating regular foods and going fishing which is one of his favorite past times.
My family didn’t initially know much about Kindred Hospital other than it used to be the old Saint Anthony’s Hospital and we visited my grandmother there when we were younger and she had been admitted. The social workers within the hospital were very friendly and helpful however, we have had our fair share of both good and bad experiences with Kindred’s employees and the care that my father has been recieving.
Their ICU unit is wonderful especially one of their nurses, I wish I could remember her name at least but the few times dad has been placed in the intensive care unit, she has been truly wonderful and acommodating to both him and our family.
However, just as there are good employees at the hospital that we have dealt with and who have worked wonders and really cared for my father, we’ve also had bad ones. Like the doctor he has who you have to chase down physically just for a meeting, his female partner which basically was rude in telling me that my father would never breathe without the ventilator again, she really lacked compassion when we needed it most. Also, I’ve had a bad run in with another one of the workers who is some kind of counselor who basically was rude with me due to the fact that she hadn’t seen much of our family visiting, so instead of asking me if we had been by to see him, she proceeded to lecture and get rude with me right in front of my father, as if he’s not dealing with enough, as if our entire family isn’t dealing with enough.
Other than that, my father has been moved from room to room so many times that for months, we constantly had to play a search game just to find where they moved him to on a weekly basis.
The few employees that don’t take their job the way they should seem to simply keep my father drugged up so they don’t have to deal with him. The physical therapist was working with him although we’ve seen only small improvement and the therapy has seemed to stop ever since he is said to never be able to breathe off the ventilator. However, certain nurses take the air out of his trach and allow him to breathe on his own and talk to us for up to twenty to thirty minutes at a time without any troubles at all. Yet he’s confined to a bed, has a feeding tube is on a respirator and is lucky if he gets to sit in an extremely uncomfortable chair for a few hours out of the day.
We appreciate all the good things that Kindred has done in helping my father and easing our pain of not having him at home but they could do a whole lot more, instead they just seem to take the easy route for the most part and allow families to lose hope due to certain improper aspects of their employeement.
Do I think Kindred is a good hospital? Well, dad says that the nurses treat him okay but at the same time, the doctor’s tell us he’ll never come home but fail to tell him a different story because he always asks us when he’s going to be able to come home.
So all in all, I’d say that it would depend on who the doctor is and what nurses they have on whether Kindred is a good or bad experience but as far as I can say as to my own experience in the care they provide? They could do a lot better than what they seem to be doing.
