Don’t Die in ER

Ok, I admit, dying may be a little strong if you didn’t arrive in an ambulance but WTH. The other day I went outside to play kickball with the children. What a blast until I am running towards first to make a double play and I trip over the base, fall and hurt my arm. Can’t cry in front of the kids right?  Needless to say I was ROTFBIWLMBO (Rolling On The Floor But I Wasn’t Laughing My But Off)! My children could see the pain on my face, so we all packed up to go to the hospital.

We arrived at a crowded (understatement) Huntsville Hospital Emergency Room about 8p.m. ish on a clear Tuesday night. After sitting there for about a half hour I asked one of my fellow injured waiters how long had they been waiting. They responded going on four hours and they had not even been to triage yet, nor did they know how many people were in front of them. Triage is that little room were they take you to get your blood pressure, temperature, pulse, etc, before they take you to a room to eventually be seen by a doctor.  Medically, triage is known as a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition.

So, question.  If it takes anywhere from four  to six hours just so the severity of your problem can be assessed and prioritized, what the heck is going on back there and more importantly what are you supposed to do in the mean time. So let’s get  this straight.   I am sitting there what IMHO is excruciating pain with an ice pack on my arm and semi-dazed from over-the-counter pain killers that are not really working.  Then I’m supposed to sit and watch Family Guy (or whatever) for the next six hours, get this, not to be seen by a doctor but just to be assessed and prioritized as to when I will be seen by the doctor. I don’t even like Family Guy and we haven’t even talked about the time it takes for a doctor to come see you once you are back there in the room, which could be another couple of hours.

Now I don’t want to come off as complainer because I might have to go back to Huntsville Hospital one day but by the time you get seen by a doctor a good bit of the pain has subsided and your body has already starting adjusting to accommodate for not being able to use its fellow member during the healing process. In Huntsville Hospitals’ defense, one of the nurses said that one of the problems is that people come in because there nose is running and it becomes a little challenging to get to the people who are in serious need of help. Nevertheless, can we come up with a more efficient way to deal with this?  I am driving from the hospital, looking at all the new buildings and facilities, saying to myself, “they need to hold off on the fancy additions and hire some more doctors, nurses, and attendants.” I said driving from the hospital because after about another thirty minutes we left and went home. That night, I lay in the bed while my family administered some hot fomentations and cold compresses with a little TLC so that I could go to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to a bearable pain but a less than usable limb. Worried that something might be seriously damaged we made another trip down to ER to with only 2 people in that entire room to our surprise.   It took all of 10 minutes to go to triage and another 10 to be placed in a room.   X-rays, doctor visits, recommendations, and prescriptions where all done in about 3 hours and I was on my way.  This was also somewhat curious to me since there wasn’t really anybody there, but that is another post.   So you tell me.  Does Huntsville Hospital need to focus a little more on staff rather than facilities or is the moral of the story don’t get hurt or sick at night because you might die in the ER waiting to be seen?  

Anonymously posted to protect the innocent