Best approach to patients and relatives complaining about "long wait."

[uniquenurse]

I am working at triage most of the time and always in the frontline to face unhappy clients complaining about "long wait". What do yo think is the best approach on this? Thanks.

[grammyr]

You still better make a note in your ER log that the person was at the triage window and refused to be triaged or whatever the circumstance was. If they go down the road and have the baby in the Home Depot parking lot, somebody could be in trouble. This actually happened to me a few years ago. The clerk told the patient we didn't deliver babies so she left to go to the next hospital, but the baby was delivered by the sister in the Home Depot parking lot on the way. Clerk lost her job.

If the patient who shows up at the window goes down the road and makes a comment about that you said something,anything that may have been misinterpreted as telling the patient to go somewhere else, you will still have to answer questions. If you have a log of people who left and if even by description of the person and not the name, you can still show that they were there and chose to leave. A friend of mine who works at a trauma center used the hospital security tapes to keep them out of trouble

[scattycarrot, BSN, RN]

The only time I have complained about about an ER wait was when I went to the ED, I arrived with sharp chest pain 8/10, was diaphoretic, tachypneic, my husband pulled the car up to the door and ran in yelling for help. The clerk shoved a w/c at him and said the nurses were to busy to be disturbed, he pushed me in, I was still diaphoretic, with dry heaves, clutching my chest, crying in pain, unable to catch my breath. After sitting through the entire registration process, waiting over 15 minutes, my husband caused a scene, asked for the nursing supervisor, and was getting ready to take me AMA from the ED when I finally was seen. My husband was threatened with being forcibly removed from the ED. When they came to do the EKG my pajamas were so soaked with sweat they had to towel me off to get the leads to stick.

Next time...I'll call an ambulance.

Can we please not turn this into a debate how bad some ER's are and how uncaring the nurses/employees are, etc.. We all know there are HUGE faults in the system which are just too broad to cover here! There are good and bad ER's like there are good and bad units everywhere.The OP is asking how best to handle people complaining about the wait, can we not stick to that???

[Altra, BSN, RN]

The only time I have complained about about an ER wait was when I went to the ED, I arrived with sharp chest pain 8/10, was diaphoretic, tachypneic, my husband pulled the car up to the door and ran in yelling for help. The clerk shoved a w/c at him and said the nurses were to busy to be disturbed, he pushed me in, I was still diaphoretic, with dry heaves, clutching my chest, crying in pain, unable to catch my breath. After sitting through the entire registration process, waiting over 15 minutes, my husband caused a scene, asked for the nursing supervisor, and was getting ready to take me AMA from the ED when I finally was seen. My husband was threatened with being forcibly removed from the ED. When they came to do the EKG my pajamas were so soaked with sweat they had to towel me off to get the leads to stick.

Next time...I'll call an ambulance.

Elthia, I hope you got treatment appropriate to your diagnosis and are now feeling better.

I may agree that your presentation may have dictated your going to an availalable room immediately.

But what I don't know is, was a room available? Was a patient being discharged and a new sheet being tossed on the bed while you completed registration (i.e., give us a few minutes to get the prior patient out of the room and get you into it? Was it feasible for the triage nurse to physically leave the department to go outside? (in my hospital's 'hood, it would be very ill-advised to go outside alone - bad stuff has happened). We do send a couple of staff, accompanied by security, outside on occasion - but not the triage nurse.

Returning to the thread -- patients/families complaining about long wait times. These patients, by definition, are lower acuity.

[LMPhilbric]

One of my friends (very Southern) walks out to the waiting room when it is full and announces "Listen up, people! You get in the order that you're dyin' and I decide who's dyin', so don't bother asking when you'll get back". She says it in that deep Southern drawl and gets away with it. If any of the rest of us tried this, we'd be canned immediately. I have been known to tell people that if they can turn royal blue or navy blue, I can get them a bed, otherwise... I usually tell people that there's a long wait, but we will do all the blood work, xrays, I'll talk to the doc about CT/US, etc. so when they do get back, all of that stuff is done and it is usually quicker. I also tell them that there's no way to know because if anything critical comes in, everyone moves down on the list. When people want to know how long the wait is prior to checking in, we tell them "The decision to seek emergency care shouldn't be based on the length of the wait, but we are happy to see you at any time." My theory on people complaining is this: If you are well enough to get up out of your chair and complain about the wait time, you're not that sick. People who are really sick stay in their chairs and moan quietly.

[uniquenurse, BSN, RN]

Thanks to eveyone who posted reply to this thread.