Many people believe the United States has the best medical system in the world. But do we?
Credit: stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu) | ©stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu)
Emergency Room Abuse: The Poor Use Emergency Rooms for Routine Care
Having two children, I've had the opportunity to spend more than my fair share of time in emergency rooms. They'd hurt themselves, or they'd develop serious medical problems and I had to get them help right away. Little did I know what would await me when I got there.
We all know about the terrible wait that we must endure in emergency rooms. In fact, it doesn't seem that the emergency room staff regards our medical situations as an emergency at all, whenever we go there. They think that we can just be put on hold until somebody is available.
However, a new phenomenon has emerged that is a serious threat to the proper functioning of our emergency rooms. On several different occasions when I brought my child in for a legitimate emergency at the hospital, I found many people waiting ahead of me with their children, people who very clearly did not have an emergency. Despite the fact that these people were not in urgent need of care, I still had to wait since they were in line in front of me.
Once my child developed a phimosis on his penis. It was taut and cracking and causing him extreme pain. When we took him to the emergency room he was screaming, turning red and passing out from the pain. We really wanted and needed to get him immediate care. The other people ahead of us, mainly minorities, had children who didn't even show signs of having the sniffles. None of them even looked sick.
I was forced to go to the nurses' station several times to insist that my child be moved up in the queue. It was amazing what persistence it took to get them to treat my child's condition with the urgency it required. I was told to wait several times, even though these nurses must have been aware that the other patients did not have an emergency. Emergency rooms are supposed to use the triage method to determine which patients have the most urgent conditions, but in practice they simply don't use it. Instead, they far too often serve people on a first come, first served basis the same as any doctor's office. I believe this form of emergency room abuse contributes to this problem.
We all know about the terrible wait that we must endure in emergency rooms. In fact, it doesn't seem that the emergency room staff regards our medical situations as an emergency at all, whenever we go there. They think that we can just be put on hold until somebody is available.
However, a new phenomenon has emerged that is a serious threat to the proper functioning of our emergency rooms. On several different occasions when I brought my child in for a legitimate emergency at the hospital, I found many people waiting ahead of me with their children, people who very clearly did not have an emergency. Despite the fact that these people were not in urgent need of care, I still had to wait since they were in line in front of me.
Once my child developed a phimosis on his penis. It was taut and cracking and causing him extreme pain. When we took him to the emergency room he was screaming, turning red and passing out from the pain. We really wanted and needed to get him immediate care. The other people ahead of us, mainly minorities, had children who didn't even show signs of having the sniffles. None of them even looked sick.
I was forced to go to the nurses' station several times to insist that my child be moved up in the queue. It was amazing what persistence it took to get them to treat my child's condition with the urgency it required. I was told to wait several times, even though these nurses must have been aware that the other patients did not have an emergency. Emergency rooms are supposed to use the triage method to determine which patients have the most urgent conditions, but in practice they simply don't use it. Instead, they far too often serve people on a first come, first served basis the same as any doctor's office. I believe this form of emergency room abuse contributes to this problem.
|
|