Tackling the Crisis in Emergency Care

September 05, 2008
Tackling the Crisis in Emergency Care

Las Vegas Sun story about a man who suffered a heart attack and went to the nearest ER for help:
"But even as Linda Scheinbaum — Morton’s wife of 24 years — was screaming [in the emergency room] for medical attention to save his life, the MountainView Hospital nurse was insisting on getting his Social Security number, emergency contact and insurance information....

...Begin with the seeming villain of this tale, the pigheaded nurse who forced paperwork on the Scheinbaums in a time of crisis. Blogger Annie has some issues with the Sun’s less-than-probing characterization: "Is the ‘nurse’ cited an unlicensed admission clerk?" asks Annie. "A secretary?...or a licensed registered nurse who is obligated to perform triage and intervention to conform to state regulations and to the hospital’s accreditation agency standards?"

This is important—if the nurse in question is a registered triage nurse, then it’s her job to prioritize patients based on the severity of her conditions. This would make her failure to recognize Morton’s condition all the more scandalous. Though the Sun isn’t specific on the matter, the nurse probably wasn’t a triage nurse, since Linda was screaming that her husband needed to see a triage nurse and got no response. ...

...As I argued in my earlier post, America’s nursing shortage can be solved by encouraging: innovative partnership programs across nursing schools, providing higher pay for nursing faculty and clinical nurses who work in high-stress situations, and—perhaps most importantly—improving working conditions for nurses through better benefits and greater voice in hospital decisions. ...

http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/0...ng-the-cr.html