John Chester, Patient Advocate
Learn more about the quality of our service at Onslow.org/Quality
One of the greatest things about a community hospital is always being there for our neighbors and their families. See how John was able to help care for his aging parent right here in Jacksonville, with the quality care of Onslow Memorial.
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"My name is John Chester, - I’m a high school teacher at Jacksonville High School. I teach mathematics, I coach football. Having an aging parent is a really interesting dynamic inside the family. About a year and a half ago my mom fell down and broke her hip and she had reconstruction surgery on her hip and it really limited her independence. And my brother and I, we had a family meeting and decided that mom needed to come live with us.
When we moved mom down, we drove down her on that Sunday. And mom just sounded terrible. She had gurgling sounds in her chest - and my wife’s a nurse and we know about lots of things - and one of the things that they talk about is the thing that really gets older folks is once they get some kind of respiratory ailment, it turns into pneumonia very quickly, so we took mom to the emergency room at Onslow.
The things that happened were just, it was just nice. The ER people recognized mom’s situation, they got her in there, and once they took the x-rays, there were just some really fascinating things that my mom really couldn’t believe. Instead of my mom being taken away to get x-rays, they brought an x-ray machine to my mom, so that she didn’t need to be wheeled around.
I remember sitting in the waiting area down near ICU, and we had the senior nursing supervisor on duty that night, just come and sit down and talk to us, and ask us how we were doing and if there was anything she could do. It seemed like wherever we were there was somebody there to help us in some special way, and I felt good about that."