Quote:
Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
Most hospital emergency rooms are not known for customer service or efficiency. Why's that?
Because 1) you're not a customer. They don't have to give you good customer service. They need to treat you like a human being, but beyond that, they have no oglibation to make you feel warm and cozy and happy and eager to return again for another visit.
2) service in an ER is not given by the order received. It's given by priority and availability of physicians to attend to the situation presented to them. Someone with a busted knee is going to sit there for awhile, if that someone is technically stable, and someone else has just come in with a heart attack. Them's the breaks, and that's what you get for going to an ER when it's not an emergency.
There are people who are at risk of losing their lives, who need to be seen first. EVERYONE ELSE has to wait.
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You assume that the ordinary layperson/patient understands triage and prioritization of patient care like you and I do. When they show up in an ER, they don't see that, and frequently the most severe illnesses and injuries arrive by ambulance and come in through a different door and skip triage altogether.
I put up a sign in our ER in NY that read---
"The patients are not an interruption of our work, they are the purpose of it". That being said, as you know, an ER can from ghost town to overwhelmed in about 30 seconds. And when that happens, the waiting room just backs up more and more, and then tempers flare, support staff gets frazzled and people leave PO'ed. Then, of course, they get on TOTV and the story gets, well, somewhat distorted and exaggerated, we've seen it time and again.