Shady Grove Fertility

Messed up 10 prescriptions. Argued with me that cvs carried a drug. (Like I'd make up leaving CVS after being told, "we don't carry that medicine here.") Medical assistant out stepping her limitations and trying to deny me being monitored when I was ill. Saying, "the doctor isn't in office today so we wouldn't adjust your meds unless it's an emergency anyway." After they lost that battle, I had to have my meds adjusted because it was actually an emergency. They almost never knew what they were doing.

I had 3 different nurses as I moved through the process. Jamilla was my nurse throughout testing and gearing up for egg retrieval. Sadie was my IVF nurse and was my point of contact through my FET. Madison was my final nurse after completing my transfer and through my graduation from the clinic.

They nurse was pleasant enough and was available when I had a question. The staff at the clinic were great. I will say that the weekend nursing staff were a bit more compassionate than the weekday staff. But overall not a bad experience

Generally I had positive experiences with my nurses but found the nursing team approach to be frustrating and ineffective. Information would get lost between the nurses, I would get asked the same questions by multiple nurses on the team. I wished I had one point of contact instead of multiple. The staff who draw your blood and perform your ultrasounds were kind and skilled.

Generally compassionate, but to the point. Not a lot of hand holding or time taken to really make sure it was understood. In general, questions were answered as asked. But information isn't 'pushed' to the patient. I mostly relied on Reddit to learn about the process, and what i need to ask in order to advocate for myself

I would send specific questions via email and had to ask them in multiple emails because she wouldn’t answer. Initially she was fine but she did not have a caring compassionate demeanour at all. When our embryos were being transferred from SGF to our home clinic, FedEx lost them for four days and all I wanted were answers and she stopped all communication. Nobody at the clinic would answer my questions. I just wanted reassurance that they would be ok for a those days they were lost and would stay frozen. Nobody would tell me anything. My husband and I spent four days calling airports, FedEx and the crypt shipping company. Everybody had a different story. We’ve been on this journey for 13 years and this week, when our embryos were lost in transit, were the worst and most stressful to endure. We paid close to $60,000 Canadian with SGF for donor eggs and then when something went wrong they washed their hands of us. Very disheartening. Gail was the only one I could communicate with through the portal and she just ignored my emails.

The nursing staff was more helpful in answering questions (through the patient portal) than Dr. Nair. However, because Shady grove is a big clinic, you rarely see a Dr. Or your nurse in person who is informed about the details of your case. This is somewhat frustrating because you cannot ask them about your results and what they mean in terms of the bigger picture of your treatment cycle.

The nurse and care coordinator do not respond to messages, would not answer questions in any way that would provide a real answer, and also do not read your chart prior to speaking with you. They asked our egg donor right before she was going under for the egg retrieval how many eggs she was keeping FOR HERSELF. She advised that she was DONATING them, but they asked her multiple times if she was keeping any for herself. We used a known egg donor, and we had to explain the situation thousands of times to everyone we spoke to. They also treated the partner (me) who was not donating sperm as not involved in the process at all, despite the fact that I coordinated all of the care.

My nurse was a mess; she was my main contact at Shady Grove and never had any clue who I was, my history, or what treatment I was doing.

The coordinator was great when you had her attention. However, getting in touch with her was not easy.

Jamie Dean- very thorough and quick to respond to patient portal emails and phone calls. She was available to answer my many questions and super helpful in a crunched timeline.

Overall my nurses were good. I was however disappointed when my primary nurse was promoted to another location and I was abruptly switched to a new nurse with no transition period or explanation beyond, "you're transitioning to a new nurse today." There were some issues with communication, and one very serious error where Rachel had a trainee nurse call me, and she gave me the wrong instructions for medication changes that night. Luckily I had to contact Rachel for something else that day and I was able to catch the error, but if I hadn't, I likely would have lost that entire cycle. I was shocked at how dismissive and non-apologetic Rachel was about the error.

Everyone responds to emails very quickly. Everyone is very kind and welcoming. I never had any issue with communication or treatment from nurses. Phone calls aren’t the best, they prefer email.

The nursing staff was widely variable— some were fabulous, some seemed contemptuous. I definitely had the sense that they might be more engaged and on top of things if I were doing more expensive/involved treatment, but my IUI attempts weren’t at that level.

Most of the nurses I came in contact with were very capable, helpful, and compassionate, but there were several mishaps that made the process much more stressful than we hoped for. I had two primary nurses during my care. The first nurse was very personable but we had several instances where I had to correct her or ask for more detailed information on protocol. It could also be frustrating getting an answer from her in a timely manner because she was out of the office quite frequently. Eventually she left the company for another position. The second nurse was definitely better at getting back to us and helping us to feel looked after; however, there were still times we still felt like the amount of money we were paying didn't match the service we received. One of the biggest mishaps that we think is important to share was during the embryo development stage of our second cycle. The team had decided to push our embryos to day 7 because they were right on the edge of the blastocyst stage. On day 7 we waited the entire day to hear our results, holding out hope that no answer could be a good thing. By 4:00pm we finally had to call the after hour line because no one had called us. The after hours nurse called back and said that Dr. Levens had wanted to call us personally but that she could give us the results. She then proceeded to tell us that our embryos had stalled in their progression and had been discarded. When I told her we had waited all day by the phone, she replied, "Really?" So after waiting all day we heard the most devastating news we could hear from someone we didn't know and who didn't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. Dr. Levens called back very quickly after that and apologized profusely; however, we can't help but feel we were misused. We understand that there were good intentions but feel it was a very insensitive thing to put us through.

The nurse was not good at communicating with us on the results of our tests. There was one instance when my surgery was rescheduled for the next Thursday and we did a Semen Analysis on the Friday before and didn't find out till the last minute it didn't have any results. We had t pay for the surgery on that Friday and no one would give us any answers so we just figured there were no results and paid for the surgery out of our pocket.

Kim has been very helpful. She has given all the information on what is to come and what to expect after. Even when we were getting discouraged she had called me and told me what she had gone through and gave us different outlooks on the treatments given.

For as busy as the nurses are, Jody did an excellent job of responding to my concerns. Sometimes I’d get an email response and sometimes she would call, either way, I felt like I was able to get answers quickly.

I had a wonderful nurse. She was very thoughtful and provided me information in a timely matter. She was always available to answer any of my questions. She prayed for and with me. She wanted this to happen for me just as much as I did.