Dr. Howard Clayton Harper, MD

He has a terrible bedside manner. I kept telling him my port was messed up. He basically said I don't know what I am talking about and the infusion nurses just didn't understand the anatomy. Come to find out I had a blood clot that should have taken care of 2 moths before. He still won't admit he was wrong.

Rude, rushed and inconsiderate

So my son is 18 , he was hurting horribly bad so I took him to our local E.R. ....his white blood count was 22,000... was diagnosed with a ruptured appendix and a 10 cm. Abcess and was rushed to east Alabama med. Center where he was supposed to be met by Dr Harper ... we were in the hospital room 6 hours with my son in excruciating pain ( no one would give him any pain meds. ) before Harper finally shows up . He takes my child in for surgery and 2 hours later my son was back in the room .... we were in the hospital a week ... went home ... everyday he was getting worse ... he had an appointment to get the ten staples out and while at appointment my son was crying , telling the Dr he was hurting worse than ever and he could not stand the pain ... Harper was in there a total of 2 min. And never listened to me nor my child .... he just said " we dont write pain pills ... everything is fine ... you need to walk walk walk .... " I took my child home and tried to make my child walk but he… was bent over in pain ... he didn't sleep at all that night so I took him to local E.R. again and low and behold , less then 15 hours after seeing the surgeon ( remember , he told us my child was fine and it was pretty much in his head ) his white blood count was 23,000 ... the abcess had come back bigger than before 12 c.m. this time .... he was rushed back to E.A.M.C. and rushed into surgery AGAIN .... this is where my complaints begin .... today is day 9 of being in the hospital again ... he had the last surgery on a Friday and I looked at it Saturday and it looked good until Wednesday ... it started to smell godawful and when I looked at it , it looked like a staple or two had come out ... he now looks as if he has 4 belly buttons .... Dr Harper NEVER looked at it until I told him to do so Wednesday .... he said it was normal even though it is draining greenish yellow reddish stuff that smells horrible .... the incisions is gushing out ooze while the drain tube is not producing anything ... in 9 days the Dr has only looked at the incision one time , when he comes in , he doesn't look , listen or touch anything ... he just says we are gonna take it day by day ... soooooo... I accidentally missed the dr. A few days ago and had a few questions on the board for him .... my son told him about what I had wrote on the board and I quote " your mom needs to stop trying to be a doctor and try being a mom ! " is what Dr harper said !!!!! Also in 9 days , not one time has anyone VOLUNTEERED to , fill his ice pitcher , change his bedding , help him shower , clean his room , help him walk , change the date or anything on his board or anything .... so what really set me off was when one of the nurses was changing his dressing my son asked her if she smelled the foul smell coming from the incision and her reply was " yeaaaaaah ............... annnnnnnnd what am I supposed to do about it ? " I jumped up and said " you don't have to be a smart @$$ , he is human " and she was like " I wasn't being a smart @$$ ... I didn't know if he wanted me to make a face or something " long story short .... I reported EVERYONE .... Have been treated 90% better since then .... yesterday Dr Harper told my son " you are going to get us both in trouble " ... I guess because I reported what he had said but I really don't care because Dr Harper , I'm not trying to be a Dr and I'm one heck of a mom .... seems to me that Dr Harper became a Dr for the $ , NOT because he cares about his patients or their wellbeing .... wonder if Dr harper'so appendix burst and he had a 10 and then a 12 cm. Abcess in his stomach if he would prescribe himself 5 mg. Norco every 6 hours ???? What a quack ! And I thought this was one of the best hospitals and surgeon around .... boy was I wrong !

This man treated my 90-year-old grandmother and displayed the most insensitive and abhorrent bedside manner that I have ever heard of. He told her that her MASTECTOMY was essentially just "a really bad scrape." When she was afraid to get out of bed to walk around because she was experiencing dizziness, he told her that "We're Americans!!" (what that has to do with an elderly person's healthcare, I cannot say) and that "the lord didn't make people to lay around in bed." She also suffers from short term memory loss, with which he was very impatient, responding rudely when she asked questions that he had answered previously. It can be frustrating, as my family and I are well aware, but he has no place providing care to the elderly if he can't be bothered to treat them kindly. I dread to think what kind of treatment someone without family around would receive from him.