Yeah, the need for nurses is growing daily, fewer people are choosing the career and more are leaving because nursing earlier because of the stress and abuse. But another major reason for long waits is that a lot of the people in the ER are there utilizing it as a primary care provider because they don’t have insurance to be able to get day to day care or they don’t go to an urgent care office. So many people are in the ER for antibiotics, cuts, scrapes, minor burns and breaks that really don’t need to be seen in the ER, adding to the long waits for people who do need to be there.
They’re pretty good at assessing quickly who is a legitimate cause for concern and who isn’t.
For instance, if you have chest pain, dizziness and confusion, etc. you’re going to be seen faster. If you’ve got a minor laceration or a broken bone or flank pain with all signs of a kidney stone — despite the pain — sorry, you’ll be waiting… Probably because a motor-vehicle crash with brain hemorrhaging in the back just arrived and you don’t know about it and the trauma team was called and literally every major doctor and nurse is in there coding the patient.
People in the waiting-room don’t see what’s coming in as a code from the helipad or ambulance door.
More often than not, if you’re waiting a long time then it probably means it’s not too serious relative to what else is currently there. Which is kind of a good thing for you. Of course, you have anomalies like this one… But honestly, this guy got impatient and should’ve waited longer if he was concerned. He wrote,
Had a bit of a health scare last night, but thankfully it wasn’t a heart attack. Not sure what it was, though, because once they made sure I wasn’t dying I was thrown out into the waiting room and 6 hours later I said f*ck it and went home.
Honestly, that’s on him. He left against medical advice and if he stayed he would’ve received diagnostic imaging eventually and if his vitals deteriorated, they would’ve called a code on him immediately.
One thing we can say is that this generation of boomers is just extremely unhealthy. We’re seeing an increasing number of old people who really don’t know how or care to care for themselves. This is where a huge part of the burden resides. It doesn’t help that medical misinformation is at an all-time high.
