We took the little one to the ER on Saturday, he had ben fighting a cold all week but got pretty listless on Saturday morning. His doctor told us to take him to the ER (we think that reasoning may have been partially due to his limited Saturday hours). Here's how it went down at the hospital:
*Checked in with the ER Nurse, then sat for 10 minutes.
*They called us to check his height & weight, then told us to wait to be called in to register (give contact/insurance info). Waited 15 minutes to register.
*After registering, we waited 40 minutes to actually be seen by a nurse.
*We see Nurse, tells us to wait for Doctor to come. While waiting, a med student comes & takes info about our son, then we wait another 20 minutes for the Doc.
You see where I'm going with this. In the end, everything seemed to be OK (knock on wood - I'm knocking on my head right now) but God forbid this was a crucial medical situation, these people just seemed to have all the time in the world. I mean, this is an ER, right? EMERGENCY room?
I won't name the hospital but for our area it's one of the better ones. We have a closer hospital but I wouldn't want to go there if I was hit by a car in front of it.
8 comments:
Not to say that you don;t deserve a more considerate response, but speaking as someone whose wife has worked in critical care nursing for more than 15 years, there's the possibility that the initial triage by the desk nurse tracked your case as non-critical, and that teh delay was caused by teh emergency care going to people coming in from, oh, carc rashes, gun shots, etc.
Yes, it sucks hugely to be holding a sick kid and left waiting, as in your mind there is nothing more serious in the universe than your own child's welfare.
Hope it all ended uneventfully.
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Yeah...you walk in with a crying, bleeding, visibly injured or really sick child and you will leap up to the top of the list.
It got so I would tell the kids to 'give it a little extra' to speed things along.
As a father of 4 boys, including triplets, I have (too much) experience with ERs in our area.
They all rank cases coming in the door. To borrow a line from the local news: If it bleeds, it leads.
We've learned to pack for the long haul, including Game Boys and crayons when the kid is well enough to sit upright.
We choose to go to West Jersey in Voorhees, or whatever it's called now. But we've also had great care at Lourdes (believe it or not).
Good luck. Hope everyone is healthy soon.
I went to the ER about a decade ago, with difficulty breathing.
It took them 5 hours to take my temperature. When they did, it was 104, which finally got them going. Turned out I had pneumonia; I was in the hospital for 4 days.
In retrospect, I should have thrown up a lung or something.
Dude, I feel your pain. I've spent so much time in the ER with the kids it's insane. If they weren't sick when they came in, they're certainly sick when they leave, having spent hours in a small room with hacking sicklies.
I found one good trick: When the doctor says to take the baby to the ER, I drive the extra 20 minutes to the one "in the country." Much faster there.
The thing that kills me is that when someone comes in bitching and screaming about their kid and threatening to call senators, they go in before you. Like they're rewarded for being a jerk...
and I left free health care in Canada for this? glad mini-you is okay
If you were to, say, cut off your son's pinky by accident, I think they'd take you right in. A nice deep cut might work too.
Harsh.
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