Quote:
Originally Posted by villagerjack
Better to call EMS 911 in a case like that rather than go to a busy Emergency Room.
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I was working in the ER the other day and we had 7 (yes 7) EMS teams waiting in the ER halls with their patient. The rule is that they have to remain until their patient is seen by an ER doc and assigned an ER room.
It is not a matter of under-staffing it is a case of overpopulation. Every single one of our ER rooms was full plus the 7 EMS in the hall with another 20 (?) or so in the waiting room.
We can not release a patient to an admit floor until a room becomes available. So the wait is long. I was down there to act as stop gap nurse as if the patient had been admitted 'upstairs'.
This time of year there are simply too many patients and not enough rooms. In the summer it is just the opposite. The down side of a hospital in a 50% snowbird (plus guests in the winter) community.