I work in a rural hospital. 6 beds in the ER and the town has one stop light. If you blink while driving you're through town without realizing it. We send most of our transfer pts up the road to the next hospital, but sometimes (like today) every hospital within a 90-mile radius is full. Then we try the cities up north. Almost always the doc there will get snooty and ask "Why can't you keep him? Aren't you a hospital?"
I understand they're used to having all resources at their fingertips, but how come they can't understand that not all hospitals do?? After spending over an hour calling facility after facility, I finally found one with an open bed and then spent I-don't-know-how-long explaining to them, "No, we don't have neurology or cardiology here. No, we can't do an MRI in the middle of the night because the MRI trailer only comes once a week in the daytime", etc. etc.
Sometimes I feel like banging the phone on the desk!
