Wednesday, April 4, 2001

I take no joy in writing this letter, and I recognize this letter may go no further than the office shredder.

My wife passed away on March 4, 2001, at the Fayette Community Hospital. My comments do not include just the aforementioned hospital, for her odyssey included a short stay at Southern Regional Medical Center and an extended stay at South Fulton Medical Center.

In all three hospitals, the bottom line was the same. The medical support (doctors) given my wife and to me can only be described as without any coherent leadership, no known time that a doctor might appear in her room, or for that matter, what doctor. No effort was made by the doctor to call, so as to inform me of what he was telling the patient, proposing to do, or her medical status. It was a crap shoot.

I spent hours at her bedside everyday, but seldom did those hours include time with a doctor or even who the doctor was on that day or week, if any.

Not a day has gone by since her death that I haven't anguished over my failure to recognize and attempt to rectify a medical program of Russian roulette. My only excuse may rest with a widely held myth that the title "doctor" implies god-like qualities, a role they often play.

I would hope that the hospitals would take a look beyond the brick and mortar and evaluate the medical product they are housing. I suggest the doctors would do well to remember that the patient and family should be a part of the total medical process and not the victim of it.

Frank Slater

Fayetteville

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