Dr. Robert P Nelson, MD

I wish I could give 0 Stars for Mr. Nelson. He helped to kill my mom. After AmL battle and a stem cell transplant my mother had made strides, but had issues lingering. She entered the hospital to have fluid removed from her abdomen as she had done before. Mr. Nelson was the man watching over her that weekend of August 1st 2009. As my mom spit up her fecies in her bed side trash can he continued to treat her pain with adding more morphine. My family called me 12 hours away and said something was very wrong. My mom was supposed to be going home that week. Mom told me she was in the worst pain ever worse than childbirth. See they had told her the guided imagery machine they had always used when removing fluid from her abdomen was being used in the basement therefore they would do it bedside! She said it was awful. i called and spoke with Mr. Nelson and he told me that “your mom has made it before, but she won’t make it this time”. I was shocked!!! He went on to speak of her liver… issues which I nor my family did not know about. He said, “Your mom won’t make it through this”. I begged for him to help her. I then called moms regular doctor on her private cell at home and begged her to get to the hospital. She said she’s call him. My sister and I flew to get to mom that night. My dad was beside himself. My mom coded while under Mr. Nelson’s care because she choked and aspirated on her FECIES!!! He stood looking at her brown shit in a can yet pumped her full of morphine and ignored our please. Once in ICU Mr. Nelson had sent a note that mom had already recieved platelets earlier. As the Resident Dr. Hatoum tried to get mom on the vent that tube would not go down for all her fecies clogging her throat!! Finally he did and once they were trying to get veins moms veins were blowing. Turned out Mr Nelson lied and he never gave her platelets either. We were told mom would love about 12 hours and to say goodbye. As we prepared to say goodbye the next morning Mr. Nelson showed up to my moms room! He expected her to already be dead. He stood chest to chest with my father and told my dad to pull her plug because she was gonna die. My dad argued with him and told him he would give mom every chance to climb another mountain as she had so many times before and proved them wrong. Mom did not die that day as he hoped. In fact she lived and was stable. Until some lady resident showed up one more big around 7am and changed our mothers bi vent setting to another setting while my sister and I were present. We had never seen this woman before. As she walked out the room the vent alarms began sounds as the staff ran to us. Moms oxygen dropped low. No one would give us answers except Resident Hatoum stated that it was an accident t and she went to the wrong patients room!!! There is so much more I can write, but Mr. Nelson along with others and IU Hospital killed my beautiful mother at the age of 54. She was so loved and she has been so missed since September 18, 2009. My dad fought so hard for her and sued them but the system makes it impossible for people to get Justice. While I do pray for Mr. Nelson and those who did my mom and us wrong I hope they always remember her face and the great big smile she always had!! Nicole Cook- Loving Daughter to Beverly Sue Cook

I absolutely adore Dr. Nelson. I had a stem cell transplant 9 years ago and he is my doctor. Very bright doctor who always will find time to keep me informed of my disease. Love IU nurses too!

Dr. Nelson listens, takes time, and shows that he cares about my son's medical conditions and WHOLE HEALTH. I highly recommend him as a specialist.

I was worried about comments I had read about Dr. Nelson but after I left his office for the first time I realized I didn't need bedside manner, I had had that plenty before by other Doctors. I needed real answers to my complicated illness. I finally got some answers.

I saw Dr. Nelson for 8 years and he never seemed to care about me as a person. He kept calling me Mrs. and I am not married nor ever have been.That was just the beginning. Every apt. he would lecture me about something. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and he was angry because I was using Remicade which really helped.I was also on gamma globulin. I was never sick with the respiratory diseases most patients get. Yet he would berate me at each visit. He never gave me test results and I finally quit him when he hadn't done tests for a year and I had the audacity to ask for them. I have CVID which was diagnosed 10 years before I met him. My other doctor retired. I finally asked why I was driving 2 hours each way and waiting in the office only to be insulted and looked down on. He even accused me of seeing too many doctors! There is obviously something wrong with him. He appears not to enjoy his practice. I hear he is very intelligent but I didn't find him a good teacher, very condescending. He… may be good for transplant patients but not for immunodeficiency patients. Don't go here if that is your diagnosis. It is the worst medical encounter with a doctor I have ever had.

I was at this clinic in Indianapolis for the first 7 years of my childs life, and had a great experience, but when my child's immunologist left, my son was left with Dr.Nelson. I was told by my sons previous immunologist that he would need IVIG for the rest of his life, but in different intervals. Shortly after he started seeing Nelson, he was pulled off IGG therapy and I was told he was "cured", and I had no reason to come back and that I was a hyper parent ( yea because I love driving 4 hours there and back because I'm hyper), He is rude, arrogant, and clearly has little medical knowledge in the field in which he is practicing. After going without therapy for a while the little titers my son did make that were being kept up by IGG therapy are gone and he is now completely absent! I found a REAL IMMUNOLOGIST, who said that the worst thing that could have been done was stopping therapy, which is what his original immunologist said. He is a awful doctor, who gives awful advice and gives… awful care! Luckily for me and my son I knew better, and did what I had to do for him before something bad happened. This happened almost 5 years ago, and it still infuriates me to my core everyday. Thanks for nothing Dr. Nelson!

We went to see Dr. Nelson because the Dr. treating our 7 yo had retired and we were looking for someone to take over his care. We explained the situation and history very clearly. When we came back, he had decided to completely ignore the history and take our son off of the plasma treatments right before school was starting. The biggest problem is that a year ago we had tried that and our son got deathly ill primarily due to the exposure with other school kids. He had to miss a significant amount of school days. He completely discregarded that and asked us to sign a form agreeing to let him test our son's blood every time we came in. He was very arrogant and disrespectful. We found a different doctor who was night and day! Our son is back on treatments and we will be stopping the treatments at the end of the school year to check and see if he is producing the necessary gamma globulins. So if you don't want your child to be treated like a lab rat, run away!!

This is an update on an earlier post I left. We got a new specialist for a rare bone marrow disease, and thank goodness we did. Things are better, we have learned new facts about symptoms and management, and we are receiving professional attention from a personable, intelligent, considerate, respectful, knowledgeable doctor with virtually the same credentials and experience and exceptionally improved demeanor. The upshot: don't take haughty, nasty, impatient, abrupt, intimidating and dull-witted communication when you can look around. Someone better is possibly right around the corner. It would be next to impossible to fail if you look.

If you are considering meeting with or scheduling an apt. with Mr. Robert Nelson you need to reconsider. I usually consider myself a cup half full type of person, but after meeting with him I had such a sour bitter taste in my mouth. I refer to him as â??Mr.â?? because I refuse to call him a doctor. He is the most demeaning, arrogant, condescending and disrespectful person I have ever came into contact with. He was so disrespectful. He definitently did NOT Foster Human Dignity and Preserve my rights as a Patient, as is IU Healthâ??s mantra. Our first visit with Robert Nelson was so quick there was no time to interact with him. He mainly told us he needed to get blood work prior to talking to us about a plan. That sounded great to my husband and me. Our next appointment was so disappointing. I think that my case is truly so complex he just did not know what to suggest so he tried diverting the problem and pointing the blame at all the other doctors that are treating me. If… this had been my first experience with IU Health I would never ever consider stepping foot on their premises again. I have to admit I did leave his office so upset that it actually flared my other health problems. Someone that seeks a specialist wants to be helped and cared for. When we did get home I was so quiet that I think it did shake my husband a bit. He at that point went online and printed out for me some other patients and their experience and showed them to me. Itâ??s not that I want anyone else to have a â??badâ?? experience, but it did make me feel a bit better knowing that I am NOT the only patient he has treated in this manner. I wasnâ??t going to write about my experience. I just wanted to forget it and never think about it again, but it was so upsetting. Iâ??m sure there probably are so many that do just forget it and never visit IU again, but that is not helping future patients. If you are reading this and know of anyone else that has had a bad visit with him please encourage them to write it down to help others. Also they should let the individuals at IU Health be aware of the incident so they can determine if they really want him representing IU Health!

Overall impression, after seeing him about once per year for 4 years, is that he is a smart doctor and a jerk. He is a terrible communicator, annoyed at being bothered by patient questions and concerns (even though the condition is potentially life-threatening, a daily struggle, and extremely rare), abrupt, snobby, unclear with information that pertains to the condition, and obnoxious. He is an unpleasant person. He did prescribe some meds that helped. But we are running away from him as fast as possible after the last visit during which he missed a very serious problem (which was later caught by a different doctor; emergency surgery followed). He has no manners at all on the phone and in person he seems to barely tolerate visiting with the patient. So smart but so stupid at the same time. We drove three hours to see him. Waste of time.