Quote:
Originally Posted by golfing eagles
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.
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I'm just an ordinary layperson though. That's why I don't get why this is news to anyone. If you've EVER been in an emergency room, in any moderately-to-densely-populated part of the country, you'd know that ERs are not the optimum place to go for non-life-threatening injuries. You'd know that the intake folks don't give a flying fart about your feelings, unless those feelings resulted in your attempted (and failed) suicide. Even then, they're not going to try and make you "feel better" about their customer service. They'll give you a dose of mind-number, strap you to a geurney, and call the psych department for urgent care processing.
How do I know this? Because I've actually been a patient in the emergency room a few times in my life. (Not for suicide attempts - I've never even entertained such, even in my darkest moments of life's experiences). Most of them life-threatening, or what I believed to be life-threatening, or what the ambulance driver felt was life-threatening.
That's how I know what I know about ER care. The fact that I'm correct, just proves - that I'm correct. Nothing more or less. I'm not well-versed in triage. In fact I thought it meant something else so I had to look it up.