i remember one night i spent in the hospital with a friend who had a bicycling accident—his face growing larger by the minute, his eye being forced shut, and a ball of swelling tissue and blood the size of an orange protruding out of his face.
we sat and waited for over an hour without so much as the offer of an ice pack.
when i finally said enough is enough, i went up to triage myself, asking for one, and the response i got was disheartening, to say the least. the emergency room didn’t have ice packs, but the nurse would ‘see what he could do’. he came back with a ziplock bag and a few pieces of ice.
another incident left my view of the care provided in hospitals marred when another friend of mine sat in a crowded waiting room with appendicitis. the nurse didn’t take the time to examine her thoroughly, and she even went so far as to insinuate the pain was being faked for access to drugs. that nurse didn’t know what was happening, but had she taken more time to investigate, her conclusions may have been different.
when visiting the emergency room, many people are panicked and scared and look to medical professionals to give them the care they need to go home safe and sound. they sit at the triage, are asked a few questions, and are designated a spot in line depending on the severity of their health concern. but what happens between their moment with triage and their visit with the doctor? an hours-long wait where they are nothing but a number in line, clogging up an already overcrowded hospital.
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