September 08, 2010
Wednesday AM

With derision I read Marta Poore's Letter to the Editor "Praising KGH" (Ketchikan Daily News, September 4, 2010). For those who are not familiar with you, you neglected to state that you are employed by Southeast OB-GYN Clinic, which is owned by Ketchikan General Hospital/Peace Health. Therefore, I am not surprised that you had such a pleasant time during your ordeal of a broken wrist. You stated that you "came into surgery the next day and felt greeted by friends." Of course you were, these "friends" are your co-workers.

Personally, I have many illustrations that the care you received is not ordinarily the case. These illustrations involve myself, my three daughters and my three grandchildren, aside from those of friends who I attended to the Emergency Room on many occasions. An example would be a daughter who went in with a severe sore throat of several days' duration with a fever, who was not treated. The "doctor" chose to treat a secondary complaint and I had to take her back two days later to be treated for her initial complaint. I have one grandchild who is allergic to a certain antibiotic and it is in her medical files, but she was given this same antibiotic at the ER necessitating an immediate return trip when she experienced serious reactions to the antibiotic. Since I've lived here the better part of 30 years, how many more illustrations would you like that Ketchikan General Hospital's Emergency Room is less than adequate? Granted, there are situations where they excel, when they realize they can't handle something in-house and ship a patient south.

When I first moved here, KGH, for the most part, had very caring physicians and nursing staff. In certain areas of the hospital you will still find the caring nursing staff, but there are many who should be in another line of work because they obviously don't care for their job. I have watched physicians in the ER and have either seen them all or taken someone to see them, and we have a couple who are worth dealing with, the rest of them require instruction from me to do their job properly.

Since Peace Health's takeover of Ketchikan General Hospital, Southeast OB-GYN and the Wilson Clinic, the quality of medical care has declined. Yes, we have some amazing machines at the hospital now, but the physicians, with few exceptions, are less than adequate in their knowledge of medicine.

There are a couple of ER nurses that I would like to commend for your compassion and understanding of issues, and the surgical staff has always been very good.

Teri J. Wilson
Ketchikan, AK

Received September 07, 2010 - Published September 08, 2010

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