Dr. Jacklin Poladian, MD - Pasadena Elliott Easterling: Beware, I got fired by doctor Poladian for complaining about her lack of availability:
I have been seeing doctor Poladian for 7 years and have met her only 3 times in person. She has a team of nurses she hides behind to provide most of her services. Despite many attempts to see an actual doctor I was consistently deferred to her nurses. Here is the tipping point.
I came back from Costa Rica with a concerning foot infection picked up in a river. I did a dose of strong antibiotics in Costa Rica but the problem persisted. I asked to make an appointment and the doctor and they said that it would be weeks out or I could see an RN. I took the only real option offered. The RN was out of her league and inexperience on my issue. She asked to leave the room to research some antibiotics and came back with a recommendation for 2 very different and very extreme doses. I asked her if she consulted with the doctor and she said that she would. I all seemed very fishy.
After the doses there was still a big lump in my foot and I was recommended to do imaging (also by a nurse). I went and got the imaging right away and then was told the doctor would get the results the next day and contact me. I waited for the doctor to reach back to me which took a week. All the while my foot remained swollen
Here is what she wrote "I recommend urgent re-evaluation of your condition based on the imaging results that I received. You may be required to see a specialist and take more medications."
That was the last straw so I wrote her this:
"Your office staff said I could not see you till next Thursday which is crazy. It is also totally unprofessional to take almost a week to get back to me when the matter is so urgent. You need to prioritize your patients and being in the office and not hiding behind your nurse practitioners. I have yet to see you for this and the advice I have gotten from your staff has been wrong and misguided. "
I went to urgent care to see a real doctor with my imaging results. The urgent care doctor was really clear. She said there is swelling but no heat. There is inflammation but no redness. She thought that that would rule out an infection. She recommended that I wait to see if the swelling goes down on its own and not do more antibiotics. Had I been able to see a doctor in the first place I may have gotten a different diagnosis. Had Poladian seen me in person she probably would have come to the same evidence-based clinical conclusion she would not have sent me to do imaging, take extreem doses of antibiotics and then refer me to a specialist. All these recommendations were done remote.
Funny enough while I was in the waiting room at the urgent care I got this email from Poladian.
"You need to prioritize your patients and being in the office and not hiding behind your nurse practitioners. I find this statement extremely unprofessional and rude, when you dont know how a physicians day is structured to provide patient care in office and outside office. It is not your place to judge physicians schedule and prioritizing skills without spending a day in his/her shoes. Instead of appreciating the fact that the office is open and operating full time rather than having limited hours when the provider you want to see is rounding outside the office, you are calling it "hiding behind your nurse practitioners". Your expressions are not only wrong but very bilious and outside the boundaries of patient-provider ethics. I dont understand all the reasons for these assumptions and rudeness, but this type of language from a patient is an indication of a patient-doctor relationship that is no longer working."
I was stunned by her lack of empathy and awareness of the problem of her availability to patients, so I then wrote her an email quoting some of the reviews here on Yelp and other review sites and she sent me a certified letter firing me from her practice.
If you want a good long term doctor who will care and put your health first I would look elsewhere. Buyer beware!
