Milton S. Hershey Medical Center Hospital

I was never encouraged to get out of bed. I never had help getting out of the bed. When they took the cath. out and put a cup in the toilet to measure my urine my nurse would not dump it. I had to and then go into the hall to tell her what my output was.

staff in ICU were very understanding to my bullheadedness and cared for me as if i was the only paitent there on the floor. Doctors and staff did not leave my side till they felt my vitals were stable enough to just keep my on monitor

The staff is amazing, the care is outstanding...I had high expectations (being a nurse) and they blew my expectations out of the water...it truly is a FANTASTiC hospital!

Great staff, great surgeons....high class facility

I like the hospital over all because they have great doctors. If I had to choose a hospital for 1 main reason it is to have the best doctor which to me is what I had. I can deal with the rooms, or the attitudes. The doctors ability is whats most important.

I was very pleased with the staff and the hospital. I would recommend it to anyone.

Fabulous care. Only issue was that my TV was screwed up for the first day and night. If that's my only issue, I think it's pretty good.

Hershey Medical is a teaching hospital for Penn State University. As such the operations of the facility run a little differently than other local, non-teaching hospitals. However, the scope of resources of a large institution, along with the depth of knowledge of the Drs made me incredibly comfortable having surgical weight loss at this facility.

My surgery was the first scheduled one of the day with my surgeon, so I arrived at 5:30 AM with my family... there were at least another 20 patients in the Admissions department, also waiting to be admitted for who knows how many different procedures. Hershey has their act together, though, and everything worked like a well-oiled machine from admission to the operating room, with little waiting around.

I woke up at around 10:30 AM in the recovery room with quite a few other patients also waking up from surgery. I ended up stuck in the recovery room for longer than I should have been, until about 3:00 PM-- the staff told me they were waiting on a bed to open up for me. (It wasn't so bad, though-- they brought my family in to see me as soon as I woke up, I dozed a lot, and later when I asked to see my family again, the nurses brought them back right away. The nurses were also quick on hand whenever I needed a mouth swab, etc.)

I went to a temporary (private) room that afternoon and night; even though it wasn't a bariatric unit, the nursing staff were knowledgeable about WLS issues and were all really top-notch. That evening they helped me out of bed into a chair, and later they helped me take my first walk around the unit. The nurses' response time was great whenever I needed them, only a few minutes at most.

The second afternoon I was transferred to a regular hospital room (also private), where I stayed for my last night at the hospital. Again, the nursing staff were top-notch, with one exception-- one of the nurses seemed to really push her own religious and political agenda with my family and I, which I found to be quite inappropriate. Other than that, though, the nurses were really competent and compassionate.

My only complaint about my stay at Hershey Medical Center was the dietary part, with the meals sent up to my room for mealtime. After WLS, we are obsviously not supposed to have anything with added sugar, and on each and every meal tray, there were sugared items-- regular jello, regular water ice, sugar packet for the tea, etc. They seem to have a clear liquid diet menu, but not a sugar-free liquid diet menu. But since I didn't have any interest in what they brought up on the trays (I only wanted water), it wasn't really a big deal for me.

Overall, I would recommend the Hershey program to anyone interested in WLS-- they make you attend a long pre-op program to prepare you for the surgery itself as well as life afterwards, which is critically important-- it is DEFINITELY not "drive-through surgery"!!

The thing that was really good was that for the size of the hospital it has a smaller local hospital feel and the staff was outstanding.