Atlantic Specialty Care

Barbara

I spent time myself at Atlantic Specialty Care because I broke both feet and I checked myself out early because of the way I was being treated. I wouldn't put a dog in there. The food was good, they were sufficient. I was sitting on a bedpan for 45 minutes after I rang the bell. I had a friend that sat at the same table I did and they came in and they were giving her shots in the middle of the night. She finally woke up, and they'd woken her up twice, and they were gonna give her another one. She says, "I don't get shots," and they said, "Aren't you so and so?" She says, "No, I'm so and so. That lady's next door." That lady is deceased now, I don't know what happened to her. They were always too busy, they were shorthanded. One night they had one nurse that was doing medication for all five wings and she was hollering at the clients there. They said, "I haven't had my medicine," and she said, "What the hell do you expect me to do> I'm the only one here. I'll get to you when I get to you." When I first got there they did not have my medicine there. They had a complication when one of the workers that does that stuff quit, so nobody ordered my medicine, and I didn't get anything for pain. They offered me Tylenol, extra strength Tylenol. I said I take Tylenol three times a day on a regular basis. She said, "We didn't have that stuff. They didn't send everything," and I can't believe the medical center, because that's where I came from, the ICU unit. When I got there the bed was so bad I had them keep bringing pillows so I could put them under me. I know the administrator there because I'm a person of American Legion and we have taken items from there for Christmas, every other year, for veterans or spouses of veterans. So I asked her to come and look at that bed. I said, "You lay down in it," but she said, "No, I can see," so she replaced the mattress. The state came in there and were there for a month doing things because I gave them some different rooms to check, 'cause I thought it was inappropriate for 16-year-olds to be dealing with male clients that would be exposed. I couldn't believe that when she told me that both of them are 16-year-olds. I said, "Both of you don't have somebody that goes with you?" and she said, "No, they trained us for two days." When I left I told the administrator, "Number one, you need to retrain all of your staff, including your nurses on how they should treat the people to make sure that they're in the right room and people don't have to wait and wait. There's a lady down the hall that just hollered and hollered, 'I need off the bedpan. Take me off the bedpan.'"