I was a patient here in the santa monica msp program and ronald reagan in summer of 2023! im writing again but just a more detailed and thorough one! approximately 2 months or so. here is my honest review!

Santa Monica Hospital MSP Program (Summer 2023)*
initially came in through the ER and waited 6 hours came in at 3pm and got a room in the pediatric unit until 1am, i had care partner immediately and was on bedrest for 3 days i didn’t get out of my bed for 3 days which meant i couldn’t shower, only time i got up was to use the commode which was on the left side of the room, there was no curtain or privacy, yes my care partner was watching me while i used the restroom which was very uncomfortable. they gave me a 5 minute shower and the curtain had to be halfway open and if you spent even 30 seconds longer then the 5 minutes a care partner would barge in and check to see if you were doing anything “bad” in there. after meals you have to wait 30 minutes as a resting period, which means no getting up whatsoever even if its an emergency to go to the bathroom. this led to me peeing my underwear a bit on some occasions, yes you can ask if you can go but they told me no and i had to hold it.
with the meals it was 3 meals a day and 3 snacks a day. you get to pick 3 no foods, you can tell them what you would like and what you prefer but they take little consideration, you will probably only get 2 of those plates in one week. the food was ok, and no there wasn’t a lot of variety but what can you expect it is hospital food. my mom stayed with me the whole time and i had no privacy whatsoever to talk to her alone, i would raise my voice just a little and my care partner would immediately call the head nurse handling the floor, many times i would break down and cry in the room. not sure if this is normal for msp program but there was one occasion where i was participating in eating disorder behavior, *possible tw: brief description of ED behavior* yes i was hiding food, specfically in my underwear, gross i know but at the time was the only thing allowed under the hospital gown not even undershirts, anyways i was putting food in my undergarments and i thought i was sneaky doing it but i wasn’t, the nurse caught on told me to get up because my ekgs kept disconnecting, which they were not and the nurse went behind me and stuck her hand in my underwear to see if i had food there and yes i had french toast in there, *end tw* shame on me for doing that but i wasn’t in the right headspace at the time. I started crying because i didn’t expect her to stick her hand down my underwear and was extremely uncomfortable i just thought that maybe she could have asked me to take it out myself? anyways most care partners are not ed trained they make remarks that could trigger you, talk to you a lot during meals or stare at you uncomfortably while eating meals then when you dont finish they question you. all the supplements are ensure plus or max or whatever ive seen the bottles before because a nurse accidentally brought the supplement with the label and everything and also they block the mirror with some kind of paper which gives you no where to have a mirror to look at, i just put the paper to the side when i wanted to look at my face otherwise i had to use the phone camera. at the end of treatment this was my first time at a hospital for a ed, they sprung the inpatient 2 days before they transferred me and i thought i was going home, i had a mental breakdown not because of the nourishment i was about to get but because it was so far from home and i was 14 and attached to my mom  and of course i was not expecting this whatsoever and they had the audacity to say my eating disorder was taking more control of me.. i got transferred in a van on a gurney very early in the morning to ronald reagan inpatient psychward. (continued below)

Ronald Reagan Inpatient Eating Disorder Psychward (Summer 2023)
when you get there they weigh you, you have to strip all your clothes off and they will question any little mark you have. they didn’t make me squat and cough. It was very uncomfortable atleast it was 2 female nurses. once I arrived to the day room made a bunch of other people also in the same treatment as you when I was there it was all girls from the ages 13 to 17 and they were all leaving the day room is honestly a mess tables are scratched, chairs are old they have some leather chairs that are kind of miniature and a TV in front all the leather had rips and scratches towards the end of my stay they were all sent for repair not sure how they look now I haven’t returned since. If you didn’t want to be in a certain part of the room like a main area and you maybe move the chair to another space they would get mad at you and if you would stay standing for a long periods of time even 30 seconds they would tell you to sit down and honestly I don’t exercise as a form of eating disorder behavior. you can’t even do a simple task and they will note it and tell your assigned psychiatrist!! yes there is a nurse at the table and you’re with other kids. If you don’t finish your food on multiple occasions or just leave the whole dish they will put you to eat in your room by yourself with one nurse if you don’t finish it you get some nasty supplement I forgot the brand but they only have one flavor and at the time it was just vanilla if you are unable to finish the supplement after they will resort to feeding you by tube in your room alone. they do have room observation I’m not sure what this is for but there was some people on it, they never came out of their room whatsoever. You have to get the ability to leave the unit and go to the art room and [name redacted] one of the art therapist there would sometimes let us go down to where the cafeteria was at the very bottom floor of the hospital and knit outside on the grass which was very nice of him he was probably one of the best therapist there. In the day room you have zero privacy and I mean zero privacy everybody will hear your conversation in the room and so will the nurses it is right in front of the nurses station in the telephone is shared by many if the telephones are in use the nurses don’t do anything about it even if you have an emergency to call someone there’s two telephone so there’s one in the hallway as well if you don’t have any privacy there the nurses eavesdrop on you one time I was having a small argument with my mom and I was crying on the phone the next day my psychiatrist told me what that was all about. also just to remind you she wasn’t even there at the time which points to the nurses reporting this. Yes there is bathroom observation if they do notice you have a history or they notice you have been using the bathroom too frequently especially after meals the bathroom observation is very uncomfortable I do think there is a curtain but depending on the nurse they will probably not use it if they don’t use it it is very uncomfortable they stare at you while you wipe yourself they watch you pee and even poop and they don’t let you flush even after they watched you the whole time. Some nurses were very weird there was one nurse that would hit me in a playful way and along with some other patients there and she told me that if I kept calling my mom and then I would send her to the psychiatric hospital one time she moved me to a different unit just like a room I think it was a conference room just to talk to me about what I have been telling my mom. some of the nurses are rude and show favoritism towards other patients. If you don’t have anything to say to the psychiatrist aka your therapist they will start to get suspicious and think that you were hiding things from them, sometimes i would have to make stuff up just to have something to talk about. the bathroom was a  bit dirty I would constantly find grains of food around the toilet seat or on the floor or even the sink and sometimes I would find blood from other patients menstrual cycle. there was a patient using this type of behavior in the restroom and they immediately blamed me because I was the one that reported it and they put me on observation and not that patient that was doing that behavior and that patient just kept doing it. I couldn’t take it anymore and had my mom take me out early. I know some patients were there for as long as seven months luckily I was only there for two. don’t get me started on the dietician yes she was sweet and yes she was kind but she gave me an obsession with calories and counting numbers, yes it’s kind of ironic before I came into the program I knew nothing about calories I’m being so deadass after this program I haven’t stopped looking at labels. I would always make my menus with her for the weeks. she left shortly after my discharge and she informed my mom that I had become obsessed and she took the blame for it. nurses would also ransack rooms from top to bottom. (continued below)

Santa Monica Hospital MSP Program (November 2023)
Third experience at santa monica hospital for the msp program in november 2023, i stayed for a month. the program was a bit run down, nurses were careless, would say triggering things to you, and would break protocol. night nurses were sleeping at night while they were supposed to be watching me and they were eating nutter butters while watching shows. they even started to snore sometimes. also one time in the middle of the night while i was asleep i wake up to a whole set of med students in my gown fixing my ekgs on my chest, this was veey uncomfortable as i had nothing underneath my gown and they had unbuttoned it revealing my upper body completely while i was asleep, especially because there was 2 males and 1 female (im a girl). I would have preferred to be woken up. there was a nurse that would wake you up at 4:30 to get vitals instead of 6:30 because it was beneficial towards her to get out for shift change quicker. i did not like that. this time around i got 10 minute showers after 2 weeks, and at the end a maximum of 30 minutes to walk outside or inside with your care partner. one time the care partner offered me her wingstop leftovers and i declined lol that was funny though. i was sent home to wait for a spot in a inpatient or residential and i never went! now im 3 years since this experience and i haven’t gone back at all and i don’t plan on it, im recovered now! program was more rundown in november but overall it was ok i wouldn’t go back to ronald regan but atleast they saved my life at the time but overall i did not benefit mentally from this at all, if anything it made me worse (the inpatient)

*admin note: MSP stands for Medical Stabilization Program

hi, I was a patient at Ronald Reagan in the summer of 2023, I was transferred from santa monica msp. this is a review for the eating disorder adolescent unit when I first came you can tell the day room isn’t well taken care of. The chairs in the dayroom are all torn up and you can tell they aren’t very sanitary. God knows what happens in the bathroom of the eating disorder units. There’s probably tons of adolescence with bulimia in the unit. Of course the staff has to do observations on those who have the tendency on vomiting. Throughout my stay, I would find pieces of food on the floor, and you can tell they were in the sink. I would find grains of rice or bits of salmon I would continuously report this to the staff and it seems like it was never taken care of. It was very clear that there was a certain someone in the unit doing this to the bathroom and suspected as well except the staff. do you wanna know something funny I am an anorexic and I have no tendency of vomiting nor do I ever rely on it, yet the staff put me on observation and questioned me about why I reported and why I had a flushed the toilet twice.. observation here is super uncomfortable. There is one specific nurse that is young she would stare at you in the eyes and watch your every move when you were in the toilet for observation yet I never vomited. I never purged. I asked her kindly if she could maybe step behind the curtain or maybe try to look somewhere else while I was doing my business, but she said that the whole point was to look at me. I totally get that. This is their job and this is what they have to do, but they took it to another level most of the time. There is a lot of weird staff in this facility and their actions are very questionable. There was a specific senior nurse in this unit that would pretend to hit you sometimes and would actually hit you confusing but she would hit you as a joke sometimes. I thought it was funny at first, but it kind of became a continuous pattern. The same nurse would sometimes bring me into another room and tell me why I shouldn’t be calling to my mom about all my problems and that she can go to the psych ward herself. Sometimes I would call my mom and tell her if she can take me out of there and if she could come and visit me or I would tell her that they had put me on observation and I clearly do not purge. When I was in this unit, my mom was the only support system I had. My dad is out of the picture. I don’t know who else I could rant to about. I was very scared how the nurses would hear your conversation and you would talk to them right in front of their station. I raise my voice a little bit to my mom and my psychiatrist questioned me about it the next day. It felt almost as if I had zero privacy, and I couldn’t have a normal conversation with my mother. Everybody in the room could also hear your conversation as well. There is another phone in the hallway, but that isn’t even safe either I argued with my mom some of the time on the phone in the hallway and nurses would come out to peek and see what I was talking about. Also, with the psychiatrists, I always felt like I had to make up something to tell them because if I didn’t have any issues that I was currently struggling with, they would assume that I was keeping to myself. R** is a wonderful occupational therapist. I have never had an issue with him. He is very kind and he tries to make the best out of his time with you. He would take us out of the unit so we can crochet and create things it was lovely we could be out of that psych ward for sometime. Also, all of his games are epic and I would get a laugh out of his groups! another complaint that I have is how the nurse wouldn’t let you stand up for not even two seconds. I get it that a lot of eating disorder treatment centers have this protocol of not being able to stand up for long periods of time. however, I was not standing up for long periods of time. My eating disorder never relied on exercise for weight loss. my intention for standing up was never too lose calories or burn calories. It was simply to be doing a task or whatever. They also punish you if you stand up for too long I was there for almost 2 months and out of all that time I never got to be in my room I always had to be in-the day room. My tailbone would constantly hurt me, and my butt was very sore. The chairs there are classic psych ward chairs they are very hard and very heavy. They are very stiff as well. I still have bruises on my butt to this day. Also, my tailbone would become numb and so would my entire bottom. I 100% get it once again this is protocol. Right after I left this facility, K** not sure if I spelled it right she is a Dietician that was there for a couple of months, she did apologize for this matter, but I began to obsess over numbers and calories. I began to know everything on the menu and the numbers on the items like the back of my hand. I’m not blaming her. I’m not blaming her I’m blaming her technique and approach. Before the hospital stay, I knew nothing about calories. I didn’t even know what the nutrition label was. I just thought it was a bunch of numbers. I suffered from an eating disorder for a couple of years now and never never have I known about calories until the Ronald Regan inpatient program. after my stay I become very aware of everything I was eating every single thing. which I didn’t even know what that was before, pretty ironic huh? Overall I think something that needs to be addressed as the day room being remodeled and being well taken care of by the adolescence. Also, the bathroom needs to be seriously taken care of. Everything is just from my perspective and everybody has different opinions. I don’t mean to bring hate to this facility, but it’s not the best approach sometimes. there is a lot of good things in this facility. Some of the staff are definitely nice. R** needs a raise if he hasn’t retired yet. If you read my review, thank you I know it’s long lol

** names redacted by admin per site policy

Hii :3 I was admitted to the UCLA health medical stabilization program in the Santa Monica Hospital in 2023 and I would like to share my experience because I think that its valuable information to consider if you or a loved one is struggling with an ED. Anyways here are some stats about my stay

When was it/how long did I stay for? – It was in late august to early september (approximately from August 24 – september 2) I was there for about 10 days, techincally it was 8 but I was stuck in the ER for 2 days so I would like to count it. I would like to note that my insurance did not allow me to be directly transferred there (regardless of what the pediatric specialist said) and I had to be admitted into the ER first.

What services do they provide?What sort of tests did they perform and what was their frequency? – They offer medical stabilization (which is an ED recovery strategy that relies on making sure that you are medically stable). It is important to note that that is all that they did. They do NOT offer any sort of psychiatric support or mental support at all. Being hospitalized is an extremely terrifying thing for me and they did not do anything to accommodate for that. They kept me on an EKG monitor 24/7 and they did not disconnect the wires while I was using the bathroom. The only exception being when I was allowed my 2 minute shower. They performed blood tests on me every 8 hours for the first week and after that they did blood tests every 12 hours. They also kept an IV tube in my arm during my whole stay. That was extremely strange because they gave me IV fluid once and then they refused to take it out even after it was starting to get infected and gross. They also required a urine sample at 6am every morning along with their morning weight checks.

How was the hospital staff? – To be honest, some of the nurses and doctors that I saw were very nice and kind people. Because of my boredom I spent a lot of time getting to know my nursing staff and the doctors that had rounds (for better or for worse). Some of these people were very informed individuals that shared a lot of medical information to me which made me feel comfortable and helped expand my understanding of my body. BUT A LOT of the nursing staff were extremely rude and horrible at their job and as people. The CNAs changed shifts every 12 hours so I had new people watching over me for the most part and a lot of the CNA’s did not do their job. One nurse actually let me see what was on her computer when I asked and I was able to find all of my weights during my stay, the labs, etc. That definitely did not help my “recovery” at all because I am very sensitive towards my weight. One of the nurses yelled at me because I wanted my anti nausea medication within the hour. (The instance I am referring to was I had just [involuntarily] puked about X times and I still felt nauseous so they put in a request to the pharmacy for that medication. But over an hour had passed so I was getting impatient, rightfully so because I hate puking and being covered in vomit. And so the nurse yelled at me for being “impatient and inconsiderate, because my head nurse was performing chemotherapy to a 7 yr old girl in the room next to me.”)That same nurse also decided not to send in a cleaning request to clean up the vomit stained floors, and the floors ended up getting cleaned after TWO days. For reference I was a 17 year old girl at the time of my hospitalization and I was less than 3 months away from turning 18. And one common practice that the nurses did was undress my hospital gown while I was asleep without my consent or while I was half conscience. They would change my EKG stickers out without asking me to do it myself which I easily could have done. This felt extremely violating because I already have body issues and I do not like being undressed by strangers. Also this taught me a very valuable lesson, that minors do not have medical rights in the slightest. On the day of my discharge, they had a team of med students come in and undress my gown and put on extra EKG stickers that were located on parts of my chest that they have never tested before. I found out that they were demonstrating to the med students how to properly use the EKG machine. I did not consent to letting these med students practice tests on me, and the aspect of this that made me the most uncomfortable is that these students are very close in age to me. I am also a university student (undergrad) so these people could have graduated a year or two before me. I would also like to note that the nurses varied in strictness so some nurses were very chill individuals and would bend some of the rules for me but some of them were extremily strict. Also some of the nurses were just very weird people like there was this one lady that was adamant that we watched all of the lion king movies which I did not want to do at all. Also they were understaffed and not well equipped for eating disorder patients despite specializing in that. They constantly did not have enough nurses there to take care of the children who had other chronic illnesses and I. That is very understandable due to the nursing shortage but this was reflected in the quality of my care and the efficiency of how quickly I received medication and treatment.

What was the meal schedule? – They had me on an extremely strict schedule consisting of : 8am – snack, 10am – breakfast, 11am – snack, 12am – lunch, 3pm – snack, 5pm – dinner, 7pm – snack, 9pm – dinner, 11pm – snack. These meals were extremely intense especially if you have a restrictive eating disorder. Their policy for meals were, you had 30 minutes for meals and 15 minutes for snacks and if you did not finish your meal in the alloted time then they took it away (regardless of if you were still hungry). Whatever you did not eat, they would supplement with a liquid supplement like ensure. If you did not drink the amount of ensure that was given in the alloted time then they would force an NG tube down your stomach and make you eat the rest. I [accidentally] found a loophole for this system though which [description redacted]. If you are trying to recover then I do not recommend you do this and I [did this] purely as a reaction from my body (not [by choice]). They also had very weird rules and rituals around eating (if you are trying to recover and rituals are a thing you struggle with I do not recommend this place). But their rules were, you were not allowed to talk while eating, you were not allowed to look around while eating, you were not allowed to move while eating (besides moving your utensils), you were not allowed to sit in an “odd” way while eating (you had to sit with your two feet on the ground.If you got chair privileges). You could not listen to music while eating. You could not watch a show or go on your devices while eating. You were not allowed to use the bathroom while eating (fair). 15 minutes before/after a meal or snack you were not allowed to use the bathroom. They also were very strict on eating during the set times, I found myself very hungry at the end of the night yet I was not allowed food or supplements at all which was strange. They also required me to drink about 2 bottles of water a day and they always used a vague threat to force me to drink all of it but I realized quickly that [redacted] if I didn’t finish it. If they saw that I drank all of the water given to me within the day, then they would increase it by 1 extra water bottle. It didn’t matter if the number of bottles got to a ridiculous number they would still increase it. The most amount of water they wanted me to drink one day was FIVE bottles (not including the water they gave me to make me pee).

What privileges were you allowed? – You were allowed to have any sort of electronic devices with you to pass the time, the only exception being that devices were not allowed during meals. I was allowed to have anyone visit me including friends and if I didn’t want my family to visit me then I was allowed that right. During the first day, I was strictly on bedrest, but after the first day they gave me chair privileges (which meant I could sit in a chair during meals). On the third day I was given shower privileges which meant that I could get 2 minutes to shower. On the fourth day I was given walking privileges which meant that I could walk around the unit for 5 minutes. After a week had passed, I was allowed to walk outside ranging for 5 minutes to about 20 minutes (on my last day). As much as walking was refreshing to me, it felt extremely dehumanizing because they controlled my ekg monitor and it felt like they were walking me on a leash. If I wanted to walk in a certain direction, then I couldnt because they were controlling my ekg machine. They gave me a lot of arts and crafts projects which was nice and there was an abundance of kid related activities I could do (like playing minecraft on the play station, making bracelets, using a fidget spinner, etc). One privilege that I was allowed that most patients will not be allowed to receive was that I was allowed to use my computer during a meal once because I had a timed deadline for my university enrollment. If I did not enroll for my classes during that time then I would simply not have classes for the fall and would have to wait until the winter to go to Uni.

How were the doctors? How accomodating were they with food restrictions? – I rarely saw the “team of doctors”. Apparently there is a team of doctors that are in charge including the infamous Dr. R** but I had met with her once my whole entire stay. The one time that I saw this team of doctors was during my first day at six in the morning. I was half asleep so a lot of the conversations that they had with me were not registering. I never saw them again, and when I asked why I was met with a lot of snarky remarks from nurses. Including ” Dr. R** has a life and children so why are you expecting them to work on their day off. How inconsiderate.” UHM excuse me, but I also have a life and I have never met with this person besides that one time. I had a doctor check in on me once a day to take my vitals and listen to my heart and he was extremely nice and I loved meeting with him. There also is an appointed social worker that meets with you twice a week approximately and she did absolutely nothing. The only thing she would ask me was if I was being fed at home, abused, etc. I met with a dietician twice a week as well and they were pretty accomodating. I am not allergic to anything but I would assume that they wouldn’t feed you certain foods that you are allergic to. They also allowed me two foods that I “hated” that they would not give me. This was refreshing because we all have food preferences and I personally do not like hard boiled eggs so it was nice that they didn’t expect me to eat that.

Any final notes? – I would like to mention that every single thing that you do was recorded, a nurse informed me that every 15 minutes, they would write down every thing that I did whether it was writing on my computer, or coloring, or peeing, etc. Overall, I think that this experience was THE WORST hospitalization that I have ever gone through. It may be the right program for some people but it definitely did not help me. For reference I am anorexic (I have been since I was 11 and I currently still am) and it did not help me at all. It actively made me fear around eating a lot worse and it made my body issues worse. I have severe body dysmorphia so it made me feel absolutely horrible about my body. I developed a fear that [*TW*] every time I ate “excessively” I would vomit because of how many times I vomited in the hospital [*END TW*]. They offered me no counseling whatsoever and I immediately lost all of the weight that I had gained during my hospitalization. I would rate that stay a -infinity/10000. 😛

***a couple descriptions redacted by admin to be safe. note that no rules were broken & OP did a wonderful job writing this review – simply a precaution by admin to avoid accidentally giving others ideas