Sunrise has lovely facilities and many nice staff, but the lack of care they provided for our dad was inexcusable on multiple levels.
On a relatively minor level, Sunrise failed to provide countless activities they listed on their recreation schedule. It was sad to see residents waiting long periods of time for activities Sunrise failed to provide.
Sunrise determined that our dad needed assistance with changing clothes and shaving and charged a daily fee to provide this assistance. During the 7 months the services were probably not provided on at least 50% of the days. When inquiring of the care manager why the services were not being delivered, he offered ridiculous excuses such as our dad may be putting back on the exact same dirty clothes and the female staff must not know how to use an electric razor so he'd have to train them. Even the director laughed behind his back regarding his explanation for why his undergarments weren't being changed. Even though the lack of care was obvious and acknowledged by the director, a refund was never offered and never provided despite many requests.
But by far, what is most alarming and hard to live with, is that Sunrise medical staff made a medication change that was seemingly beyond their expertise and then they failed to provide the obvious, easy, and basic follow-up monitoring necessary. During the inexcusable weeks of not monitoring and missing the obvious signs of a failed medication change, he went from a stable to an unstable condition which he never recovered from and it led to the loss of his life.
Beyond wishing we didn't trust Sunrise with our father's care, our lessons to share include:
Do not trust physician care to "assembly line doctors." This is a term we learned from a Sunrise nurse and refers to doctors who rapidly sign off on orders based on nurses observations and recommendations with barely if at all observing or interacting with patients. It seems probable assembly line doctors are some of the least talented and caring doctors available and certainly not specialists in countless areas of medicine. We suggest having an outside medical professional for your loved one and having any/all medical decisions made/recommended by Sunrise reviewed by outside professionals.
Another lesson, as cited by another reviewer, is not to trust the director when she offers response dates. She didn't respond typically or fix problems even though she was likable and acknowledged lack of adequate care.
Being a calm and understanding family was ineffective for our father's care and services. Lesson learned: we should have demonstrated outrage for the lack of basic care and services and being overcharged. Our patience, tolerance, optimism improvements will occur, and not wanting to offend increased the chances or enabled this ultimately unprofessional and seemingly understaffed facility to not serve our father well. read more