"I have worked in healthcare for many years so I know it's difficult to get rested while hospitalized. I felt I received excellent care at Group Health. Their nurses are really caring and considerate-- I especially appreciated the night nurses who always used a flashlight instead of flipping on all the lights when they needed to reload my IV pain meds. They were very attentive to me whenever I hit the call button. They really pushed the water and pureed food and the nasty vitamins and meds I had to take. I had been under the impression that the floor I was on was only for WLS patients but I was wrong--it was a regular med-surg floor, so some of the nurses were not too familiar with the procedure itself. However, I feel that I received excellent care."
"Group Health does things differently-- you don't have a surgical consult until you have all your pre-op testing (sleep study, psych eval, echocardiogram, gallbladder U/S)completed. Then you have an orientation class at Group Health, where you meet your surgeon and learn about the required after-care program, in which you are required to participate.<p>Dr. Kevin Au has been a general surgeon at group Health for 25 years. I found him to be very enthusiastic, knowledgable, rather funny and very nice. He does have an accent (I think he is from China, but I didn't ask and I don't care)-- his accent can make it hard to understand some words. I think he's really into fly-fishing because that's how the exam room was decorated (reels, rods and nets) but I didn't ask. "
"I just switched to Group Health and was referred to Dr. Lewis by a friend of mine who had WLS in 1995. Dr. Lewis is very polite and sensitive. I saw her specifically for the referral to the bariatric surgeon, so there wasn't a thorough exam (I had all my medical records with me, too.)<p>I just saw Dr. Lewis for my pre-surgery pysical and she is very excited about what I'm doing, as was her RN. They both made me promise to come back after a few months so that they could see the results. One thing Dr. Lewis said she hated was the diagnosis "morbid obesity", simply because it connotates so many ugly things in people's minds like "all fat people are lazy, lack willpower, etc."--when all it really means is that you weight too much. I appreciated that."
