My mom was here for 40 days. I'll admit coming from Medical City Arlington ICU to here was a…read moredramatic shift in care. If you're like me and my family and having a hard time leaving your loved one alone for longer than a few hours, it's important to note that the equipment and processes they use is a lot different than from a hospital (ICU at that). I wish that administration and nurses would take a moment to brief new admissions on what the equipment/processes look like, but if you ask they're more than happy to go over everything. The unfortunate thing is that they likely won't go out of their way to brief you until a business day when most of us are working, despite most admissions seemingly happening Fridays. However, same goes for mostly everything else, if you ask or raise a concern, everyone is quick to listen, take accountability, and have the tough conversations (as long as ur talking to the right people). Believe me there was a lot of concerns that were voiced upon our initial arrival, some more loudly than others, but after administration displayed empathy and directed my questions appropriately, things seemed to start to settle a bit. It was not easy and required a lot of patience, but if you spend enough time there, you'll see that the nurses here work very well together. Sure - you may get a few that may not be as welcoming and a bit more hasty than others (not cool but speak up or pick up a nursing skill or two) - but most of the nurses here really started to feel like close friends to me and my family. Especially Yet and Bernard. Yet was so warm, welcoming, and positive, and Bernard is such a hard worker and so proactive. I mean they're all hard workers, what they do when they come in to your room, they rinse and repeat constantly throughout their day. The Drs are brief and only come by early in the mornings. They seem a bit pensive and uncommunicative at first, but after some time you can tell that they also truly care about the progress being made. It's easy to be high-stress in this environment and of course the lifestyle changes are going to be challenging regardless. I think communication could have all around been a bit better but please do not hesitate to voice your concerns and ask to familiarize yourself with processes. It also helps to take notes to answer questions where there are gaps or changes in care.
She was moved to 3 different rooms throughout her stay here, which was kind of annoying, but the first time was with good reasoning. The second room was nice but the other two were a bit uh... well this place could definitely use a face lift to say the least, and the cafeteria barely deserves to be called a cafeteria. The water tastes and smells a little weird here although allegedly they have water filtering systems (side eye), but overall it is much more well taken care of than some other places I've been to and it is very accessible, accommodating, and can feel pretty comfortable at times.
Although my stay here was well regulated, I speculate (emphasis on speculate) someone across the hall was being overly medicated. I overheard that the gentleman had been in/out of Kindred for a while, and his heart pressure had been dropping quite low this particular day, but in the process of trying to get him a transfusion he died. I believe his heart pressure was allowed to remain low and unattended for too long.
Which brings something else to mind: there was a point where we felt that an "anxiety" medication had been unnecessarily prescribed despite my mom never having anxiety in the past. We voiced the concerns and the Dr removed it from the list. It was only supposed to be there as a "just in case her blood pressure goes back up", but it's possible that a nurse was just giving it willy nilly because it was there. If you see your loved one not responding to medication well, stay informed and speak up. We lost precious time with rehabilitation with this unneeded prescription causing her to be overly drowzy and unresponsive.
With all that being said, the only reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 was because the case managers must be under some type of stress to rush you out of there, and so the transfer out of kindred has been a nightmare. I wish the case workers had more incentive to actually be mindful of the type of care that's needed when transferring out and not just making their best estimated guesses. I didn't find out until after the fact, but my employer offers Cariloop which is supporting you support your loved ones. They provide you with your own case manager so if you have an option like that I suggest taking advantage of it.