Shands At the University of Florida

Dr Hsu & Ethan, our PA is the best MM team!
A dedicated duo with a team of amazing nurses that truly care about their patients. Praying that all will continue to be good!

My first (and only) visit to Shands was via the ER, carried in on a stretcher. Emergency brain surgery quickly followed. I simply cannot say enough about how well I was treated. The professionalism with an unexpected level of compassion and empathy from start to finish was so far above anything I’ve seen at any other hospitals in north Florida, there is simply no comparison. Neurology ICU made me feel as if I was the most important patient they ever had and their mission was to insure not only the best medical care, but to keep me and my very anxious family as happy and comfortable as possible. Yes, the neurosurgeons weren’t exactly as warm and fuzzy as the nursing staff (and most everyone else) but weren’t that bad overall. And the lady at the ER check in made it obvious it had been a long day and I was adding to her workload. Things improved quickly from there.
I suspect that arriving by ambulance shortens the wait time, just as it does at all hospitals these days.
First followup visit was with a PA or NP and she made it plain she would sit and answer questions as long as I could ask them. Never ran into that before.

Wow! ER IS A NIGHTMARE!!! ER doctors are less than satisfactory… wait time is RIDICULOUS! Ekkkkkk

I’ve had great experiences with Shands Hospital. I’ve had three surgeries/​procedures over as many years and the experience and outcome from each was superb. Yes, Shands is a big machine that is easy to get lost in. It certainly isn’t as personal as one would like to be and it’s a teaching hospital. Expect residents and students. If you don’t like it then you can check yourself in at the other place in town.
My first experience was for arthroscopic shoulder repair. My doctor’s’ credentials were incredible and his talent as a surgeon was commensurate of those credentials. My surgical outcome was the fact that my shoulder was better than it had ever been since childhood. The staff/​nurses/​other docs all encountered made a known painful surgery great. My only complaint was that my scheduled surgery ended up being late. Not a big deal. Would you want your surgeon rushing on your procedure to meet a time deadline or have it done right?
My second trip was for abdominal surgery. Once again I found a superbly educated doctor with an exceptional record. From pre-​op to post-​op she and her staff were on time, efficient, professional, and personable. Not being my first rodeo for this particular surgery, my outcome was better than I expected. I’m at 100% plus now. This surgery went like clockwork. In on time, out on time.
My third and hopefully last visit for a while was to the GI center for one of those procedures that most men get after turning 50. The nursing staff made what seems to be an embarrassing and uncomfortable procedure really easy. The staff explained everything very well and there was never a point through the procedure that my fears weren’t resolved. Again, my doctor was superb and the entire team on the floor made my visit smooth and oblivious. The center was about twenty minutes behind but I expected it being a Monday. Only complaint — the toilet paper in the bathroom is so rough you could sand wood with it. Seriously? Most every patient here has just drank a gallon of nasty fluid that cleanses the system and has been on the commode more than off of it. Put some decent TP in there!
I’ve read the other Shands reviews here on Unilocal and I can’t agree with the majority of them. People need to remember to be a good patient. In my limited experiences I have seen far too many people walk in doctors offices demanding this and that, telling off nurses, barking at front desk staff, being rude, or just being ungrateful a$$es in general.
It’s called practicing medicine. It’s not an exact science. Our health care professionals are doing the best that they can given the information that they are given by you. Have a little patience and treat others how you would want to be treated. I know for fact the people caring for me appreciate it and I get better treatment from them vs. those who aren’t.
Shands also hasn’t asked me for money prior to any procedure. They’ve always billed me after. The other game in town will require payment before they work on you. Been there done that.
I’ll get off my soap box here and let you decide. I hope you found something useful in my review. Please hit one of the buttons below to tell me what you thought. Thanks!

They are very slow. They always claim they are behind. So you can expect to wait a very long time. Much worse than other hospitals.

One of the best health care facilitators, who care about their patients more than their own mothers do? world-​renowned, with patients flying in from all over the world? most modern, state of the art technology?
I WOULDNT KNOW, THESE SCUMBAGS
1) dont take my insurance (no problem)
2) DONT ACCEPT MY OUT-​OF-​NETWORK INSURANCE (BIG problem) and then
3) wont take CASH… get this: BECAUSE I HAVE INSURANCE (WHAAAAAAAT???)
glad I got to find out before I even got there, who and what it REALLY is that Im dealing with
GO &%*_@ YOURSELF $HAND$, you could CARE LESS ABOUT PATIENTS. i have NO PROBLEM with getting paid for services, I have NO problem paying MORE for higher quality service… BUT AN ADMINISTRATIVE DECISION THAT TIES DOCTORS HANDS AND PROHIBITS THE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS WHO NEED IT!?? THIS is what RODENTS LIKE YOU have created with your WORTHLESS «treatment» system anyway, dont know why I bothered:
Seung-​Hui Cho. As a child, Cho WAS DIAGNOSED with severe anxiety disorder and placed under TREATMENT. On December 13, 2005, he was found «mentally ill and in need of hospitalization. On April 16, 2007, he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at a University in Virginia.
* Jiverly Wong. In a letter dated March 18, 2009, Wong expressed his concerns to a local television station that undercover police officers were changing the channels on his television, making the air «unbreathable,» and had figured out a way to play music directly into his ear. On April 3, 2009, Wong walked into the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York and killed 13 people, wounding four others.
* Maj. Nidal Hasan. In early 2009, the MENTAL HEALTH OFFICIALS WHO WORKED ALONGSIDE Hasan held a series of meetings where they discussed his bizarre and paranoid behavior. Some openly wondered whether Hasan was psychotic. On November 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire at an army base near Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others.
* Jared Loughner. On September 10, 2010, Loughner was asked to leave Pima Community College in Tucson on mental health grounds — a PSYCHOLOGIST who reviewed his journals believes he showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Four months later Loughner unloaded his 9 mm Glock pistol into the parking lot of a Tucson shopping mall, killing six and injuring 13.
* James Holmes. Between March 16^th and June 11, 2012, the psychiatrist who TREATED Holmes, Dr. Lynn Fenton, wrote in her notes that Holmes «may be shifting insidiously into a frank psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.» On July 20, 2012 Holmes walked into an Aurora, Colorado movie theater and killed 12 people, injuring 70 others.
* Aaron Alexis. On August 4, 2013, naval police were called to Alexis’ hotel at Naval Station Newport and found that he had «taken apart his bed, believing someone was hiding under it, and observed that Alexis had taped a microphone to the ceiling to record the voices of people that were following him.» On September 16, 2013, Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others at the Washington Navy Yard.
In the case of Newtown, Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza, the warning signs of a severe mental health issue were right out in the open for everyone to see.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, SOUND BUSINESSMEN THAT YOU ARE! your first and foremost obligation… IS TO THE SHARE AND BONDHOLDERS! WE CAN ALL CELEBRATE WHAT A GREAT JOB YOUVE BEEN DOING TO IMPROVE SOCIETY! first by making sure no one notices youre not letting doctors give USEFUL, HELPFUL treatment to patients, but how about, more importantly: NOT TREATING THEM AT ALL!!! yay!!!

I would rather travel to Orlando, Jax or Tampa. My only and last ER visit to Shands ended with me walking out. After the registering nurse beat the crap out of her computer, calling it sev. derogatory names, she very curtly decided my doctor was wrong, I didn’t need to be in the ER and I needed to find a new doctor (this was the first person/​impression I got). She was such an angry loon, I left and drove home.
I have seen sev. specialty docs at Shands and my primary (for now) is a UF doc. To sum up Shands in general. There are three types of tier 2 hospitals in Fla that specialize:
The Mayo — quick, pro active, efficient, everyone that works there shows compassion, tag line for the Mayo — «git er done»
The Moffitt — very compassionate, gentle, efficient, generally want to solve and fix, tag line for the Moffit — «you’re not leaving here, til we figure out what’s wrong with you»
Shands — we’re the best, we don’t have to like you or be competent… because we’re the best… test, test, run more test, as long as you have insurance… test, test, test. Did we say, we’re the best? tag line — «if you have an out of pocket maximum, we’ll help you meet it, then send you off to be someone else’s problem to fix, we just need experience for our students… we didn’t say we were going to fix you… Dugh!»
The most pretentious, patronizing, dismissive medical community in North Central Florida… and Florida in general. They need to change the name to UF and drop Shands altogether, because this Hospital is equivalent to going to a massage school for a massage or a beauty school for a hair cut — you already know going in, it’s a crap shoot on what your experience will be, you just hope for the best. For all the money and freebies this school gets, for all the money home owners have to shell out to pay what UF doesn’t, you’d think the powers that be would strive to set a precedent rather than give birth to arrogant, lazy, belittling medical professionals. Don’t believe the Hype.

Emergency room is filled with college students suffering mostly from colds (I am not a doctor but there was no blood, just coughing and sniffling). Young lady with apparently a hurt ankle she complained about a lot was on the hospital courtesy phone the WHOLE time having inappropriate conversations LOUDLY with I assume was her boyfriend. Mom needed stitches and had to wait over 4 hours after being referred to this hospital. She was transferred from a small hospital in Williston, FL (Tri County) that turns out is in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and had sold the equipment necessary to fix my mom’s injury (another hour wasted not including all the travel time).

It’s hard to review a huge teaching hospital and be truly fair, as really each department and aspect should be reviewed as a stand-​alone business unit since to a great extent, this is how they function. Still, Shands is a crucial institution in Gainesville and one that many people may need information on and seek that information here on Unilocal,so I will be as helpful and fair as possible.
The good:
–A Level-​One trauma center and a leading cancer hospital, Shands at UF is the University of Florida’s main teaching hospital and offers outstanding trauma care, especially now that the new South Tower of the hospital is finished. The new emergency department is located there and is truly state of the art as are the new surgical and inpatient facilities.
–Overall, the inpatient floor nurses are top-​notch as is to be expected in a teaching/​research hospital of this caliber. Most support staff also seem to be well-​trained and care about their jobs.
–The research aspect and having the wealth of knowledge of the UF College of Medicine faculty behind the care here is a huge advantage: for that matter, really you don’t just have the College of Medicine expertise but also College of Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy. There’s a lot of cutting-​edge research happening at UF in the health sciences and it does directly benefit the quality of care in patient services at Shands.
The bad:
–The hospital complex grew up over time in a very organic, unplanned, manner and thus is like a maze in places. I worked for four years at the Health Science Center (the larger complex within which Shands resides) and still there’s places that are somewhat confusing. Moreover, the only maps provided to patients are for the areas most-​used by patients, like outpatient surgery. You would think this was the NSA at Fort Meade for how secretive Shands is in not wanting to give out good maps: when I worked here, I was repeatedly stopped by patients in areas where a doctor’s office might be located but wasn’t in general a patient-​care area. In example, most doctors who are faculty have offices near their labs in the Academic Research Building. Once a family stopped me for directions because they’d wandered around for half an hour trying to find a doctor in endocrinology and couldn’t. This needs to be addressed.
–Many nurses and office staff will talk down to you in baby-​talk explanations of medical conditions and procedures, which I find really insulting. Look, health care and research is the largest single career field in Alachua County: are you really surprised when your patients are also doctors, nurses, and technicians too? If someone seems aware and articulate about their health, respect that.
–Some office staff are as lazy as the day is long: I seriously saw two receptionists looking at boots on the Zappos website at their workstation, and this is while there were patients nearby. No wonder it’s impossible to get anyone on the phone there at times.
–The automated phone system is a Byzantine mess.
–Physicians, whether faculty attendings or resident housestaff often seem rushed. Most, however, appear to be very well-​trained and sincere clinicians despite this. Some, for office visits, are booked months in advance. Some specialists are harder to get in to see than to get a personal meeting with Lady GaGa or President Obama.
So overall, I feel this way: We are blessed to have Shands in our community for all it contributes. For trauma care in our region, it’s a huge advantage. However, it’s not properly addressed a lot of facets that come with growing as large as it has grown. This is a demerit to the hospital’s administration more than its clinical staff. I would shop around for outpatient and elective procedures but certainly come here for any very serious emergency.