Discussions

What’s on your mind? Share it. Whether it’s an idea, an opinion or an experience that you’ve had with health care. You pick the topic. We’re all here because we want to make medicine better.

Start A New Discussion

Excuses for long ER waits

Posted By: Dawn Jones meta_seperate Date Posted: April 6th, 2010 meta_seperate Category:

ER wait time has been a problem for years. I would hate to see how our ER system would handle an epidemic or mass casualty when you wait for hours for an X-ray currently. I wish that the hospitals would hire a few PAs and NPs, put in 20 mini exam rooms and crank through the sore throat, ear ache, pregnancy test nonsense. Then, I wouldn’t have had to have the guy sitting next to me with chest pain fall over dead in the ER. (By the way, that really happened.)


1 Comment


Comment By: Rebekah meta_seperate Date & Time: April 15, 2010 at 1:51 pm

Barnes-Jewish Hospital has an extensive Mass Casualty plan in place, and we run drills several times a year. We use different scenarios each time in order to prepare for the different types of injuries and patients we may have – the drill may be for a bombing, a tornado, a biological threat, or other incidents. Mass Casualty pulls the entire hospital team together, not just Emergency Services, and puts all manpower in one direction. At BJH, that's thousands of people. This enables us to respond effectively to disaster situations.

Unfortunately, the cases you refer to – sore throat, ear ache and others – do not always belong in an emergency room, and they do increase the wait times for people who have medical situations that cannot wait for a regular doctor's appointment. The public needs to learn what is and is not a medical emergency, and I don't think a lot of people get it. That ruins the speed and quality of care for all the rest of us.

I do agree that a few more PAs and NPs in the emergency departments would not go amiss, though.