Esbensen, Kari

I wish I could give her ZERO stars. Ugh! This doctor works at Georgetown University’s Internal Medicine Department. This department has a lot of Residents working in it. No big deal, I’m used to that. The fact that I’ve never seen the doctor who is assigned to me doesn’t even bother me because my regular Doctor is AWESOME (William Bender). Enter Dr. Esbensen. I went in for an appointment with her because I was as sick as a dog and couldn’t wait 2 weeks for Dr. Bender to have an open appointment. I expected her to be nice and personable. Not the case. I had something that had me sick for weeks and she kept asking me questions as if I was lying. This is a major reason for me not wanting to go see a doctor. I don’t have to lie to you about being sick. She was really rude when asking me questions and she NEVER diagnosed me… but she gave me antibiotics. Hmm, ok. I thought. So I took the first dosage of antibiotics and it came back up. So I contacted her to ask her what I should do. Did I have enough of the medicine in my body for it to work? Do I need a repeat dosage? Questions that I left for her assistance to ask her about, while I was waiting for a response I did not get any better. When she FINALLY called back it was about a day or so later, at 7 pm and she called from a blocked number. OH, and it was a Friday. She left a message saying that she didn’t know if I’d kept the medicine down long enough and I should call her on Monday if I still had problems but because of my asthma I should go to the ER if I have any issues… REALLY? She never followed up to see if I was OK or anything. So, I moved on from that and thought I’d never have to see/​speak to her again. WRONG.
On Tuesday, ⁴⁄₄ I called and left a message for MY doctor (Dr. Bender) about an issue that I was having that required immediate attention. I never received a call. I called on Thursday morning and left a message again saying that If I didn’t get a call back that day, not only would I call back in the afternoon but I would file a complaint against the assistant and the doctor. The Assistant called me back that time leaving a message saying that she’d left a message for the doctor and that I should have gotten a call. I hadn’t. She said she’d leave another message. Guess who called me back… after 7 PM, from a blocked number? DR. ESBENSEN! She said that there wasn’t able to help me over the phone without knowing what it was that I was talking about and that she would have the scheduler call me to make a visit. She hadn’t listened to my message AT ALL. If she had listened to my message she would have been able to answer my questions without having me make an appointment. Better yet, if she had called me back during reasonable hours, from a number I recognized I would have been able to talk to her directly.
As planned, she had the scheduler called me. At that point, I was fed up and asked for the name of someone I could make a complaint to. She gave me the name of Dr. Dennis Murphy. He’s awful to. I’m still waiting on a call back from him from a week ago. I will be making a complaint against him on Tuesday if he doesn’t respond to me this time. (I called and left another message today 4÷15÷11). They don’t understand that ER’s are for emergencies. Why do I have you if I can just go to the ER? And why do you have Admin Assistants if you don’t respond to your patients within the 24 hour window that you say that you will on your voice mail. I’d rather be sick than have her care for me again!