The following letter is from my wife to the Patient Advocate for the Columbia Missouri VA health care system. The response we would receive from this letter is that we need to just deal with the nurse because there is no one else to take her place. I was told that she was “rough,” to people, but she had good intentions. Most of the other nurses at the clinic seem to dislike the nurse in question. While they cannot say anything professionally, they clearly indicated they had a problem with her.

My name is Lisa Nutter. My husband is a disabled veteran currently being seen at the Harry S Truman VA Clinic. He was medically retired from the Army for physical injuries/issues, as well as C-PTSD. We recently moved up to Missouri; so my husband is trying to re-establish care for his physical/ mental health needs. He is having GREAT difficulty with the clinic and the nurse in charge (who corresponds with his doctor as a liaison for his needs ie he calls in for an issue trying to set up an appointment and the nurse somehow has the power to determine if he is seen or if a message to relayed to the doctor).For instance, he had an appointment and one of the things discussed was his digestive issues; samples were taken and a GI consult was given. However, the GI consult was scheduled for more than a month away and he has been experiencing a lot of discomfort and symptoms. My husband tried to speak with the nurse to schedule a follow-up appointment (due to the severity of his symptoms) with the doctor he saw in your clinic and was denied by the nurse because he “has a GI consult.” My husband has resulted to only using the online messaging services now because he had quite a verbal quarrel with the nurse and it aggravated him greatly.