shady grove

[Anonymous]

hey how exactly does shady grove work?

i know it's a huge practice, and i know i will mostly see the nurses during monitoring - but what about for the retrievals/transfers? will it be whatever doctor is on call or there on that date? or will it always be dr. greenhouse?

i just worry about getting lost in the shuffle and am not sure how i feel about a practice this large....on the other hand they have great stats and large practices probably have many more resources than smaller ones.................

[Anonymous]

I saw nurses (or were they techs?) for monitoring about half the time, an RE the other half the time. I think when you get closer to the trigger or when it's a "key" monitoring session, you get an RE. Or at least that was my experience over the past two cycles. My nurse also encouraged me to request to see an RE during monitoring if I wanted to. Whoever is doing procedures that day will do your ER/ET. But, as a patient, I have the impression that the key decisions are what protocol you will use, how to dose your drugs and how many embryos to transfer -- and those decisions are made my your RE (or at least most drug dosing decisions are made by your RE, obviously if s/he is on vacation or its a weekend that's another story.) I don't feel like a number at SG -- I know my nurse well and have had numerous phone consults with my RE (one of my cycles almost got cancelled, so there were several phone calls). Also, I think if you go to a smaller office as your "home" office, that helps it not seem like a factory (I got to the DC office). Just my two cents... good luck!

[Anonymous]

My experience was that your main RE will do the retrieval/transfer if they are working that day. Things get different on the weekend but you will always be talking to the same nurse and your RE will be reviewing all the information from the monitoring.

You can't argue with their results. I can't see how any place around here could have a better lab, and I think thats important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My experience was that your main RE will do the retrieval/transfer if they are working that day. Things get different on the weekend but you will always be talking to the same nurse and your RE will be reviewing all the information from the monitoring.

You can't argue with their results. I can't see how any place around here could have a better lab, and I think thats important.

Agreed. I got pregnant on the first try with Shady Grove. My doctor was not on call on the day of embryo transfer. But all the doctors that I had were great. I was especially impressed with the Lab procedure. On the day of the transfer, the administrative personnel verified my name and other information against my driver's license before putting the ID on my wrist. Then, the nurse asked me to state my name and confirmed it to the wrist ID. The doctor and the Lab technician each did that as well. Then, after the transfer, the lab technician took the vial back to the Lab to look under the microscope to confirm that embroyo was not in the vial. Then, she came back into the room to let me know that. I had same procedure done at GW Fertility, but I do not remember them being as cautious.

[Anonymous]

My experience was that your main RE will do the retrieval/transfer if they are working that day.

I've heard this is the case with many of the Rockville doctors (I know for instance that Chang makes a real effort to do all his own patients' procedures). However, it's not with the doctors from the satellite sites. For instance, I was a patient in the Columbia office and my RE is only in Rockville on Wednesdays for his weekly "procedure day". The rest of the week he's in Columbia office seeing patients, doing IUIs, etc.

Over the course of 3 IVF cycles (2 fresh successes, 1 frozen failure) I had transfers/retrievals done by Esposito, Widra, Nair, Stillman and Garde. Mock embryo transfers done by Levy and Sagoskin. All were extremely professional. SG is REALLY good at processing a large number of patients through the IVF process each and every day. As the previous poster mentioned, they have an elaborate system of checks that works like clockwork. My husband and I are both physicians and were always impressed by how sooothly the entire system runs (when compared to so many other practices/healthcare entities that we've been exposed to at work and personally).