Unsafe Hospital?

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · May 8, 2016

Generally speaking, the New York Post is not considered a reputable bastion of journalism and news stories. Therefore, I give any article that appears in the New York Post an automatic side-eye glance.

Editorial Team / Admin · May 8, 2016

I'm skeptical of anything from the New York Post unless there's another reputable source reporting the same thing.

applesxoranges, BSN, RN · May 9, 2016

I have never heard of the New York post.

It reads like a bad single man medic story. The best way to explain it is someone who has to do it all and can't direct others. After the situation is done, it is always someone else's fault.

emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B · May 9, 2016

NY Times - all the news that's fit to print.

NY Daily News - all the news that fits.

NY Post - we think this might be news, maybe, maybe not.

NY Sun - benghazi!!!! Birth certificate!!!!

Anonymous865 · May 10, 2016

According to CMS they are

"Worse than the national average" on "Rate of unplanned readmissions after discharge from hospital (hospital-wide)"

"Worse than the national average" on "Rate of unplanned readmissions for heart failure patients"

"Average time patient spends in the emergency department, before they were admitted to the hospital as an inpatient." Coney Island - 459 minutes, National Average at other high volumen hospital - 299 minutes

"Average time patients spend in the emergency department before they were seen by a healthcare professional." Coney Island - 43 minutes, National Average of other high volume hospitals - 29 minutes

They did better than the national benchmark on CAUTIs

They did worse than the national benchmark on MRSA

They may be doing more of certain types of outpatient CT scans than they should

They did worse than national benchmarks on patient satisfaction

In all other areas they were about the same as the national benchmarks.

CMS is supposed to adjust the data for patient acuity, whether it is a teaching hospital, etc. to allow apples-to-apples comparison.

It doesn't look like a great hospital, but probably not awful.

CMS scores the hospital based on medicare data, so this doesn't tell you how well they handle peds. The article was mainly about peds emergency cases.

A&Ox6, MSN, RN · May 10, 2016

I saw this headline on the NY Post on my way to work. I did my pediatric rotation at Coney Island (until Sandy).

While the hospital is not a good one, even among the city hospitals, I think that the nurses that I met were all competent and skilled. Some items in the "article" stand out. If he was in a pediatric clinic, it is possible that some of the nurses do not really know how to start an IV. In NY, many nursing students never practice IVs. A nurse in an outpatient clinic may have never done this or have not done it for a long time. Also, clinic nurses are not always ACLS/PALS certified.

Also, the writing makes it seem that the resident was upset that "staff" was going for breaks and naps. Who is this staff? If in fact it is referring to nurses, aides and allied health, they are allocated breaks which should be taken.

WoosahRN, MSN, RN · May 14, 2016

I just can't imagine a scenario where a child is coding and staff stands around and does nothing. I have faith in my profession and fellow nurses that even if inexperienced or panicked, they would at least jump in and try to get an IV or try to find stuff. I believe there are some bad facilities out there and some bad employees but 100% of the staff involved?

("The first thing I asked the nurses to do was prepare an IV. But they hadn't gathered the tourniquet and IV needle in advance, nor did they know where the supplies were kept. I had to leave the child to gather everything myself.") And in what world does the doctor know where all the supplies are and not the nurses? Or refuse to treat (unless he ordered some obscene dose and they were uncomfortable).

AZQuik · May 14, 2016

The hospital may be unsafe, I have no clue.

This article is definitely written to bag on nurses.

I cannot imagine a whole nursing staff, I mean everyone like the article describes, just standing there staring blankly while a child codes.

Sorry not happening. Even a pre nursing student is likely to freak out, or go try to find help, or something. Very few people just stare at someone dying. I've watch plenty of people in their first code, very few actually freeze, and stay frozen.

This hospital may suck, but this still reeks of almighty physician to me.

MaxAttack, BSN, RN · Jun 25, 2016

Little of this article makes sense. Apparently this resident started all of his own IV's, gave all of his own medications, and did all his own CPR. The nurses were there to, I don't know, change batteries in wall clocks.

And what kind of CPAP machines do they use that can't be brought from ICU to the ER? We frequently get patients who were started on NIPPV in ER. Sounds like this guy should have gone and found one himself, like he did with everything else. Then makes it sounds like the kid was admitted to ICU because of some sort of negligence, like the kid was ever going to discharged from the ER.

The worst part about this article is, even if there was some sort of serious systemic negligence happening this resident was too much of joke that felt the need to embellish every story to be taken seriously.