Letter to the Impatient Patient
Dear Mr. Taipei:
I hope your "sinus infection" has improved since your ER visit. Despite your absence of fever, nasal congestion or cough, I understand why you might want to take an antibiotic at the first sign of a scratchy throat. Knowledgable medical consumers like yourself "don't want it to turn into strep" like it has so many times in the past, so the early administration of antibiotics is a must. Unfortunately, in this country, folks like you can't just go to the pharmacia and buy some ampicillina yourselves.
Bummer.
Instead, you had to take three hours out of your busy night to wait in a crowded emergency department with a bunch of people even sicker than you, if you can possibly imagine such a thing. Given your "Type A" personality, that wait must have seemed interminable. The frequent lookey-loo behavior you displayed as well as your angry trip to the nurses' station to loudly express your displeasure made that quite clear, rest assured.
You must not have noticed the sign on the wall that explained the triage procedure, or perhaps you thought that it didn't apply to important people like you. Or maybe you just didn't understand the word "acuity." Yes, I really do have patients here in this very ER with heart attacks and strokes, and no you cannot see their charts. I can't believe you even asked.
I realize that it would only take me a few seconds to write you an unnecssary antibiotic prescription, but it would take at least a couple of minutes to listen to you bitch about the waiting time some more, a couple of minutes to hear your littany of woe, a minute or two to actually examine you, and 5+ minutes to do all my charting.
I'm required to do all of that stuff before you can leave with your prized placebo, and I'm just not willing to make the little girl with the wrist fracture, the elderly lady with the syncopal episode or the guy with active chest pain wait any longer than they have to already just so you can be discharged in only a minimally less angry condition than your current state.
As I've said to those before you and will say again to many after you: "If you're sick, you'll stay." Excuse me.
chart notation: patient not in room at 0135. LWBS
Best wishes,
Scalpel
I hope your "sinus infection" has improved since your ER visit. Despite your absence of fever, nasal congestion or cough, I understand why you might want to take an antibiotic at the first sign of a scratchy throat. Knowledgable medical consumers like yourself "don't want it to turn into strep" like it has so many times in the past, so the early administration of antibiotics is a must. Unfortunately, in this country, folks like you can't just go to the pharmacia and buy some ampicillina yourselves.
Bummer.
Instead, you had to take three hours out of your busy night to wait in a crowded emergency department with a bunch of people even sicker than you, if you can possibly imagine such a thing. Given your "Type A" personality, that wait must have seemed interminable. The frequent lookey-loo behavior you displayed as well as your angry trip to the nurses' station to loudly express your displeasure made that quite clear, rest assured.
You must not have noticed the sign on the wall that explained the triage procedure, or perhaps you thought that it didn't apply to important people like you. Or maybe you just didn't understand the word "acuity." Yes, I really do have patients here in this very ER with heart attacks and strokes, and no you cannot see their charts. I can't believe you even asked.
I realize that it would only take me a few seconds to write you an unnecssary antibiotic prescription, but it would take at least a couple of minutes to listen to you bitch about the waiting time some more, a couple of minutes to hear your littany of woe, a minute or two to actually examine you, and 5+ minutes to do all my charting.
I'm required to do all of that stuff before you can leave with your prized placebo, and I'm just not willing to make the little girl with the wrist fracture, the elderly lady with the syncopal episode or the guy with active chest pain wait any longer than they have to already just so you can be discharged in only a minimally less angry condition than your current state.
As I've said to those before you and will say again to many after you: "If you're sick, you'll stay." Excuse me.
chart notation: patient not in room at 0135. LWBS
Best wishes,
Scalpel
posted by scalpel at 9:35 AM
13 Comments:
I would love to say I can't believe she asked either, but I can believe it, some people are idiots
Damn Right!
I can't believe what people come to the ER for sometimes!
*snicker* Scalpel, You're my HEEEEEERRRROOOOO.....
Hell's yeah. Love that motto.
Great post -and so true!
Hi Scalpel- boy is THAT a familiar drumbeat!
I love the "lookey-loo behavior" phrase and confess that when I was back to the ED as a Pt with 3 more kidney stones and vomiting from the stones/Morhine and Dilauded that my husband was one of those lookey loos by the door.
I knew they were having a hellacious night and could appreciate what the staff was going through and yet I was glad he was being a lookey loo just in case it made a difference. Actually, I did get some extra attention because one of the nurses (who wasn't my nurse) had worked in another hospital with me and so she kept coming in every chance she got and is actually the one who got the IV in and turned the lights out and got me a cold cloth when I got the headache on top of it. She was an angel on earth as far as I was concerned.
The last shift that I worked at the hospital last May was actually a busy 3-11 shift. I had gone down to the nurses station to retrieve some papers and when I turned around to walk back up the hall there were people in every door all looking at me wanting to get my attention.
I started walking briskly back up the hall because I had something to get done immediately. It isn't a long hallway but from people in 6 out of 7 doorways I got hit with a barrage of questions and concerns and I actually continued walking fast, answering them and pivoting twice while responding and walking at the same time. (I love nites like that - unless equipment breaks) That is actually the last memory i have of working there - it just stands out.
I've said it before - waiting time is a factor in choosing a restaurant, not an ER.
If waiting time IS an issue to you, then you're not sick enough to be in an ER. Go home and plague your family instead.
props doc. patients are the same in every ED in the country damnit! chiropractic school doesn't seem so stupid now does it?
That must be so true 911Doc - whether an inner city Friday night gun and rifle club or a Mayberry RFD communitity hospital- in all ED's - waiting is waiting and human nature is human nature. the numbers are just different although usually proportionate to staff.
Regarding my last shift - I am glad I went out with only a busy shift and not a sad or traumatic one. You never know - just glad it worked out that way.
I am curious tho - do the big ED's ever having a boring, slow or uneventful shift? Or are you guys guaranteed every shift to have something big and traumatic?
Scalpel, that was perfect.
I tell my patients: if you go to emerg, and it's busy, and they get you in *without* waiting, start worrying because there's something *wrong* with you.
"do the big ED's ever having a boring, slow or uneventful shift?"
Uneventful? Sometimes.
Boring? At times, always with the possibility of sudden unexpected excitement.
Slow? Not anymore. From start to finish I'm usually moving as fast as I safely can. When I arrive at night, it's not uncommon to have 20 people lined up in the waiting room, some having waited 6-8 hours already. When I leave in the morning, my goal is to have cleared all of them out, but lately there are usually a handful still waiting to be seen. They just keep coming, and they don't realize that when they arrive at midnight I'm often just then seeing patients who arrived at 6 pm.
And I'm not even in a "big" ER.
Wow Scalpel!
I have to say patients have it much better at the community hospitals here. Even on our worst nights people do get pushed through within a few hours - usually.
Sometimes though, on a busy nite labs etc get seriously backed up and that causes delays which make the patients accompanying them crazy. Or if there are no open beds to admit, etc.
That said - most of the locals get antsy about waiting and start asking questions while the city people usually seem to take the wait in stride.
The city folk look a little nervous about coming into the ED in a hospital that looks like a city post office (pts have commented on that)but then usually leave all smiles because of how well they are treated and usually in a timely fashion.
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