This was the single worst experience I've had in a physician or specialist's office. The care was contradictory, with a nurse giving different advice than the physician's assistant. I met the surgeon just once, even though I had two pre-surgical visits and one post-surgical visit. I met him for two minutes before I was administered anesthesia.
The standard of care was consistently terrible from my first visit, from the secretaries to the nurses to the physicians' assistance to post-surgery. I am especially disappointed with the surgeon, Dr. Scott Trenhaile. On my first visit I watched office staff violate ADA law and try to forbid a dog from entering the building, saying that a physician had just been bitten by a dog. (The risk management director, who later intervened and returned my calls when my clinical staff would not, said that she was shocked by this blatant violation of law. And no, she'd never heard of a doctor at the clinic bit by a dog.)
I stayed with my parents overnight after my surgery. My dad is a physician. My mom underwent the exact same surgery as me with a different surgeon. At their kitchen table the morning after my surgery, my nerve block was beginning to wear off. I squeezed the ball at the end of the slings, as the nurse had suggested; she said I needed to do that to avoid a blood clot. I turned my wrist a quarter-way and immediately felt the tendon (a tendon that was not torn before the surgery but that the surgeon elected to cut and move) pop off the bone. It was phenomenally painful. I learned after going to another surgeon that the tendon was clearly shortened too much and so it too tight and snapped -- like a too-tight guitar string.
The tendon that detached after surgery did not show damage on the MRI. (Another tendon was torn and was also repaired.) The surgeon did not conduct a physical exam before the surgery. One of the two physicians' assistants I saw at two different appointments before the surgery had pressed on one spot on my shoulder and asked if that was painful; he said there was arthritis that would be removed during the surgery.
The surgery failed and neither my surgeon nor his staff would not return my calls after my first post-operative visit when an MRI confirmed my suspicions. (I had phoned the emergency number they gave me post-operatively and the PA who returned the call said there was nothing to worry about, that there are lots of creaks and pops after surgery.).
I had refused strong narcotics after the surgery, and I called a half dozen times for a nurse or clinical staff to refill pain medication after the surgery failed. No one answered my calls or called back. Rather, I heard from the clinic's risk management director, whose job is to limit medical malpractice. My surgeon's response at Ortho Illinois (not to me directly, but through the risk management director)? I didn't follow protocols.
Bear in mind: 1) protocols are listed on a worn hand-out; this list is incomplete compared to other orthopedic surgeons' guidance for post-surgery 2) a pre-surgical office visit consisted of being left alone in a room to watch a video of a physician's assistant (not the surgeon) lecturing on the anatomy of the shoulder; the video is highly edited, the PA is holding a model of the shoulder 3) the nurse and a physician's assistant gave contradictory feedback after the tendon tore -- the nurse completing my sentence when I explained over the phone what motion I was doing when I felt the pop; the PA told me in a post-op office visit that he wanted me to move my wrist that exact way after surgery.
This surgeon does up to 12 shoulder surgeries a day. The clinic and the surgical unit was a complete circus. It felt like drive-thru medical care. Completely insufficient. read more
