I had a hip replacement surgery at the Red Deer hospital last week and, given the situation, what a wonderful experience it was.
The people greeting me at the main entrance at 6 a.m. were pleasant and very helpful despite the arrival of numerous patients when the doors opened. There was one porter available at the time and she was friendly and helpful. When I arrived on unit 21 the nurse asked me a few questions and then he took me to an area where I could get ready to go to the operating room. He provided me with all the information in an easily understood manner and made me feel very secure and comfortable.
I was taken to the holding area where the anesthetist met with me and took time to look through my chart and talk to me about my concerns, and explain what she would be doing. Shortly after that I was wheeled into the OR and all of the staff introduced themselves. They treated me like an individual and not a body that was going to be worked on. A far different experience than when I had prostate surgery at the Royal Alexandra in Edmonton in 2011.
The surgery went very well and I was taken to recovery, where I encountered another group of pleasant caring staff. They made me feel comfortable and encouraged me to do the necessary breathing exercises in a humorous but caring manner, rather than being dictatorial.
When a bed was ready I was taken to unit 21 and experienced another group of caring, professional and friendly staff.
It was also encouraging and helpful to actually have the surgeon talk to me after surgery and give me opportunities to ask questions and get real answers. If this had happened after my prostate surgery at the Royal Alexandra, I might not have gone through nine years of stress trying to find an urologist to deal with the issue.
Having worked in health care for 35 years I tend to evaluate things from a different perspective and felt I should let the people of Red Deer know how fortunate we are to have such caring staff looking after us.
We all know the stress our health care workers are dealing with in the current situation and the stress they were facing prior to this with inadequate services available for the population being served. The government, in it’s typical way, seems to still believe you need to spend millions of dollars on numerous studies which come to the same conclusion time after time. As residents of the area we need to get more vocal about the stresses our health workers are facing and the frustration and perhaps put that kind of stress on our MLAs. Let the doctors and health workers know we are on their side and the bureaucrats in Edmonton that we want action.
Neall Stevens, Red Deer