- Long Read - I do hope my experience can help parents to be on decision making when selecting confinement center and sincerely hope that Santorini can improve.
For context, me and my wife stayed at Santorini on the 29th Oct and our stay were cut short to 5th Nov.
Before I begin, I wan to express my appreciation to the nursing team and the kitchen/cleaning crew. They were excellent and professional throughout. The poor review are directed solely to Santorini Management alone.
On 8th day of our stay, the person in charge/Florence informed us of a covid positive case to a mommy and her toddler. We were inform at 5pm, were told to leave the confinement center immediately. Without offering any help nor alternative solutions. My wife, a c-section patient with a 8 days old baby (our first child) were asked to be on our own for 5 days. It totally defeated the purpose of a functioning confinement center. We had to quickly consult the nurses for crash course on basic care for newborn, again the nurses were great while on contrary zero help were given by the management/Florence.
Reason given was covid is unprecedented and they have no prior experience. However
1. Covid is not unprecedented anymore in fact it is to be expected in any businesses and crisis management + business continuity plan should have been in place for such scenarios
2. Covid protocol calls for immediate isolation in situ. Sending customer home is irresponsible to the safety and well-being of our family at home.
3. Is idiotic to imagine a covid protocol that send client home everytime there is a covid cases. Imagine scenario of multiple covid incident during your 28 days confinement. you’ll get sent home every other day.
It is an easy and lazy solution from Santorini to have us go home for 5 days. should anything happen to Mummy/baby at home, Santorini will not be held accountable. To me the management severely lack accountability and responsibility.
(Note: lunch and Dinner were still delivered to our home, Food & the tonic soup was Florence’s main priority, ironically at the moment it was the least of my concern)
While at home, baby develops fever and we spend nights at hospital. While the only help given by Florence was constant PR stunt of asking “how’s the baby”, “ask mummy to rest more”. To which annoyes me to the core.
On the 3rd day, Florence offered an option for refund (pro-rated) after I repeatedly request for her to provide some useful help I.E. introduce temporary nurse which she was unable to.
Thankfully we are able to check in to a new confinement center immediately on the 3rd day.
As such I will be able to draw some comparisons that could help you in your decision making process and some crucial question to ask (for context, the new confinement Center cost 2-3k more)
1. Covid protocol - check for covid protocol. Responsible confinement center should have isolation room for babies and in case of covid, mummy and baby will be isolated in house and not left irresponsibly on your own.
2. Nursing Structure - Presence of chief/head nurse. This ensure instruction given from parents to nurses are well cascaded and recorded. There is no head nurse made known to us in santorini, hence Florence is the only focal person.
3. Jaundice checking - Santorini do not provide Jaundice reading check. Doctor visit to your paediatric can be reduced if the Center provide daily jaundice reading.
3. CCTV monitoring of baby room. Access to surrounding in the baby room I.E feeding/Bathing. Which Santorini is excellent at this.
4. Nurse to baby ratio - Santorini offer 1-3 ratio which is good. 1-4 will be a stretch.
5. Consider confinement Center where baby and mummy are one the same floor. Santorini is a double storey bungalow, nurses will need to carry baby up/down the stairs which can be a potential hazard.
To Santorini Management, sincerely hope for serious improvement to your crisis management. Mummy and baby shouldn’t suffer for your lack of planning. There are Santo 1 and Santo 2, crew segregation and baby isolation could have easily be implemented.
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