Surgery Gone Wrong

Shane Plaski

At the end of December I was at Marshfield Hospital in Marshfield, WI.  I was there for a heart procedure.  I arrived at the hospital at 8:00am and signed in for my surgery.  I then went back to my room where I changed into a gown, they put an IV in for fluids and hooked me up to the heart monitor.  Then the anesthesiologist and the doctor came into my room and talked about what was going to happen next.  I was wheeled down the hallway to the surgery room, I only remember a brief time before I was put under.  After the surgery I encountered some problems, due to short-staffing and inexperienced nurses related to that type of experience.  

There were many things that went wrong because they were short staffed.  First, they were supposed to check on me every 15 minutes but they only came in every hour. Another issue was that my heart monitor was supposed to be plugged in but it was not.  I was also supposed to eat right after I woke up from surgery, 11:30am, but I didn’t get anything to eat until after 4:00pm.  

They were also Inexperienced with that type of surgery. For instance when I first got there out of surgery they wanted me to walk to the bed, but I couldn’t because I had just had surgery, In the surgery I had they went in through my major artery in my leg. They didn’t know I was fully healed but had me get up to walk. The wound opened up and I bled a decent amount of blood and when the nurse came in see held pressure on it and I got back into the bed. After two more hours of bed rest and a new bandage I was finally able to leave.

And finally they were unprepared For example the room that I was in wasn’t even prepared for the  type of surgery that I had. Another example is when I was ready to leave the Nurse brought in a wheelchair and said “goodbye”. 

Therefore I don’t think I will go back there if I have to have another surgery until they have more staff and the nurses are more  prepared.