Originally Posted by spacenurse
Once I called my doctor for a refill of my Imitrex prescription. He said, “Why don’t you have your husband bring you to the ER? I’ll call ahead and order you Demerol.”
spacenurse, this strikes me as an incredibly *inconsiderate* (the best polite word I can think of right now) thing for your doctor to suggest.
1. That's not how the ER works and he damn well knows it.
2. If he has the time to make a phone call then he has time to fax an Rx now, doesn't he?
3. You are his patient, if he knows what med he wants to order then he knows what's wrong with you. Why does he want to send to you an ER with an unfamiliar doctor for a familiar problem?
This is but one example of the ER overcrowding problems pointed out by other posters above. ERs are
full of people who do not have medical emergencies, and many of them are not the uninsured people without other access to primary care that you may be picturing.
I hate to get up on the same soapbox that I seem to have been on multiple times recently, but this is just a sample of my day in triage last week. All of the patients I'll list here were insured (I know because they were pulling out their insurance cards as I was triaging them) except as noted:
Patient 1: Mid-30s female, one day of 2 episodes of vomiting. No diarrhea. No fever. Normal vital signs. No significant PMH or co-morbidities.
Patient 2: Mid-20s male, sinus pressure, headache & nasal congestion x 2 days. Low fever (< 101 F), had not taken OTC antipyretics since first day of s/s. Normal vital signs. No significant PMH or co-morbidities.
Patient 3: 3-year old w/fever x approx. 12 hours. No cough, vomiting, or diarrhea. Drinking juice from sippy cup and playing with toy as they came into triage. No OTC antipyretics given by family -- mother states, "We have assistance so we get a prescription for Tylenol when we come here."
Patient 4: Early-20s male, congestion & malaise x 3 days. Had been seen in the ER on first day of s/s. Diagnosed with viral s/s, instructed on OTC meds, fluids & rest. Back in ER "because I'm not better."
Patient 5: Mother of toddler, states she brought toddler to the ER for eval of ear pain. "I talked to his pediatrician's office but the times they offered me weren't convenient." (No, I'm not kidding. I wish I were.)
I could go on until my post took up a serious amount of bandwith on this site, but it would be boring. You get the point. Once upon a time, people had the common sense to realize that garden-variety short-term illness befalls us all from time to time, and simple comfort measures at home treat the symptoms. So why are all these people in the ER? Because they want what they want when they want it, IMO.
And this is why it is increasingly next-to-impossible for ERs to function as a "safety net" for those without other options. The ER is treated as a giant high-tech, open-24-hours convenience store.
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