Needs Repair: The True Story of Free Healthcare, Status of Cook County Hospital January 2014

I am a 4th year medical student, I just completed my Subinternship at Cook County Hopsital in January.  I just wanted to post a couple of thoughts before I forget about them. To sum up the status of that hospital and system, two words, as seen by the picture of the two toilets I have attached: NEEDS REPAIR.

The picture I posted is two toliets (one urnial, one toliet) in the SAME bathroom on one of the main medicine floors at Cook County Hospital. These 2 signs were there for all 4 weeks of the rotation, I kid you not. Also, one of the major flourescent lights in the same bathroom was out for 3 weeks of the rotation and half of the bathroom was dark. This is NOT a joke. This is John H. Stroger/ Cook County Hospital in 2014.  This is a broken and out of order hospital.

The main thing I noticed about the Cook County Hospital, which I noticed during there my 3rd year in December 2012, is the ancillary staff are overall horrendous!  The attending doctors and the residents are all hardworking and amazing people, but the nurses, phlebotomists, and some of the lab personnel.

I will never forget when the pneumatic tube system, used for sending specimens to the lab was broken for 3 hours or so, I walked down a tube of blood  to the laboratory and told the woman who handles processing that the tube system was down, her response was: "I know it's down. Good and I don't give a damn". There was no need from her part to phone anyone to fix it or tell me help was on the way. It meant less work for her and so she didn't care. This sentiment is the epitome of the attitudes of the ancillary staff at Cook County.


 Other things that occur: phlebotomy, the people who are supposed to draw blood rarely do their  job on time. This delays all patient care. They are some of the laziest people I have ever seen. I used to draw blood, it is not hard work. It rarely gets done right at Stroger/Cook County.

The transport system meant to get patients from place A to B is horrendous. They are all lazy people and people never get to procedures and appointments on time because of these workers who have a horrendous attitude to do any work.

A good proportion of nurses are LAZY and many times are flat out rude when you ask them about patient issues. They are mostly middle aged, african american sassy women. The rest are either philipino or Indian.

I will never forget this encounter:
My patient needed a urine sample before she went for CT scan. My resident told me to go see the nurse in person and remind her to get it as soon as possible because it was ordered 5 hours ago and still had not been collected. So, I go to the patient's room and run into the nurse outside of it. I ask her if she could collect the specimen as soon as she could. Her response: "Do you know where the urine cups are?" You can collect it yourself."  My response: "I am sorry that is your job, I am not doing it!" This attitude is seen on a daily basis. It is because the nurses are unionized by the government and thus it is very hard to fire them for poor work ethic.

County is a poorly managed, GOVERNMENT RUN hospital.  Anyone who supports UNIVERSAL healthcare needs to rotate or shadow at this abysmal hospital for 1 month. Those people will change their mind about what GOVERNMENT healthcare entails.

My last opinion on County: I have a MASSIVE amount of respect for the residents that complete their training there. You have to be incredibly patient to deal with the constant bullshit of that institution. Patience that I do not have.

anyways, County was a good learning experience as far as interesting patient cases go. As a place to work or train? I could not do it.

-MD in 14