Foothills Medical Centre

I went to Foothills Hospital due to severe ear pain and partial hearing loss. I had already been on maximum doses of painkillers for five days, and on this day alone, I had taken 7 cefixime pills—yet my condition was not improving. After waiting for 3 hours, the triage nurse told me I’d need to wait another 6 hours. She even said the wait times listed on the AHS website were a “big lie.” She suggested I book an appointment the next afternoon instead.nnI explained that I had to take care of my children during the day and would instead go to a walk-in clinic on Monday. I expressed full understanding of the situation and was preparing to leave—when the nurse suddenly said, “I’d like to educate you on how to properly use our healthcare system. You shouldn’t choose urgent care just because it’s more convenient for your child care needs.”nnI was shocked. As a taxpayer, don’t I have the right to access the public healthcare system when I’m in severe pain and losing my hearing?nnThis attitude was both unprofessional and deeply lacking in empathy. Patients deserve to be treated with respect and understanding—not condescension and judgment. I hope the hospital seriously reviews how its staff communicates with people in vulnerable situations like this.

In all honesty, they have the best staff you could ever ask for when dealing with any kind of medical emergency. They're compassionate, generous in their care and consideration for everyone around them not even just patients, and definitely deserve our praise, admiration, and genuinely fair compensation.

I have two experiences with this medical centre!nThe equipments are absolutely perfect, they have well trained and experienced staff. The nurses are taking care of each patient very well and they act very friendly and professional. There are a few things that need to be considered: The rooms are small and the staff are suffering when two or more people need to be in rooms. A lot of scattering in the atrium and rooms. Emergency timings are far above believes which take more than 1 or 2 hours some time. My recommendation is to get here in early morning or late at night. I promise it will take at most 30 minutes to proceed. Finally I captured some photos if it can help

I have been a regular it seems over the past 7 years at the Foothills. Three major back surgeries and just recently cervical surgery all performed by Dr. Fred Nichols. AMAZING doctor. Very professional, compassionate, empathic and kind. Been in different rooms after each surgery and for the most part the care was great. Some nurses however, lacked compassion, and were as if they wanted to be anywhere else but there. Some wore so much perfume it was overbearing. Certain ones displayed such laziness and couldn’t even help me with getting my feet up on the bed, they just stood there and watched me struggle. Never helped fix my blankets on my bed, the simple things that should just be common sense. But like I said, for the most part, the care was great. When you’re in recovery, every little thing is so important in your healing process. I am grateful for this hospital and would highly recommend it to others. I also thought the ER was good considering I came there by ambulance and was in excruciating pain. One should come to Red Deer’s ER if they think the Foothills is bad!

Currently a patient here and struggling a lot. The nurses and doctors are amazing, caring, and dedicated!! But Foothills really needs to put money into fixing the building. AC is freezing and leaks, the public bathroom looks like a zombie escape room, and the vending machine has taken more money from me that your average mugger.nnCan someone please fix this building so the people who stay and work here have a nice place to exist? I caught a cold here while recovering from an illness ironically.nnIn all seriousness though, I have a potentially life threatening condition that a nurse didn’t note down properly in my file? And it almost literally killed me. So while I love the spirit here? I literally can never come back in case this place kills me lol.nnEdit!!: I learned that all proceeds from the gift shop go to patient care!!! PSA to everyone who wants to help: go buy their amazing, cute products! They are high quality and everything earned goes back to patient care!