Death after two-hour ER wait ruled homicide

I noticed the other day an ER called "Chest Pain ER." I have no idea if this is an improvement as I was just passing by on my way to visit the doctor.

Excuse me, but she died of a HEART ATTACK, right? Them there's what we call 'natural causes' in these here parts. Failure to appropriately assist might be negligence, but it isn't and wasn't the primary cause of death.
~faith,
Timothy.

I feel for both the family and nurse involved in this situation. If a person does not do triage/ER there is no way they can fully understand this. I truly believe that triage is the most difficult job in the ER.

I cannot count how many times I have had a person come to the triage window write down "elbow pain" on the sign in slip, and then proceed to look in the waiting room and see how busy it is and scratch out "elbow pain" and write "chest pain". There are also those paitents that come in 3-4 times a week complaining of classic MI sx. I have also triaged minor complaints such as knee pain s/p knee replacement three weeks ago that just don't look right and take them back and they are having a STEMI. Can I tell you how many homeless people come in when it gets really cold outside with the complaint of chest pain because they know that it will get them a warm place to sleep for at least 24 hours.

There has been times when I have had 20 patients in the waiting room, every room in the ED was full, we have 12 patients in the hallway, two helicoptors are arriving 5 minutes apart, the ambulances won't stop rolling in, and 4 chest pains sign in at triage at the exact same time. Yes it would be nice to get all four of them back as the standard states. Is it going to happen? NO! I find it funny how we are so apt to slam the triage nurse.

I work in a level 1 trauma center and we do not have the resources available when things like this happen. Oh sure we could go on diversion, but that does not help. We cannot divert traumas because we are the only level one trauma center in the region, we cannot divert strokes/MI's becasue we are a national stroke/heart center. We cannot tell the walk in, sorry go to the community hospital across the street becasue we are on diversion. WE ARE IN A CRISIS HERE PEOPLE! Things like this are going to be more common until something or some laws are changed.

I failed to mention the fact that there has been a time when I had a mother and father bring in their six children because they found a dead bat in their house and they wanted vaccinated for rabies. Does any one have a clue how long it takes to triage a family of eight people? Try doing vitals on six kids all under the age of 9. It took me 50 minutes to triage this family. The family signed in at noon and around 12:30 a patient signed in with chest pain. I did not notice it because I was chasing around a preschool in the triage area. It was 20 minutes before I even got the chest pain in to the triage area.

We cannot tell people to go see their PCP's. We cannot get support from administration. They just tell us to do the best we can and then when this case came about our director had the nerve to email it to us. When we do have patients in our ED that finally get a bed assignment after setting there for 8 hours it often takes another 2 hours to get them upstairs, because the floors are working short/busy or whatever. We cannot make the general public understand that becaue their child vommited once three hours ago it does not mean that they should bring them to the ER. Oh and just because you arrive to my ED by ambulance does not mean that you are going to get rushed back to a bed. Many of our ambulance patients are brought in and triaged just like walk ins. We even have doctors offices that do direct admits from their office and close at 5:00 so they bring the patient over to the ED in a wheel chair to wait for their room upstairs because they don't want to pay their staff overtime. It is a sad situation that health care is in. Especially emergency departments and ER nurses.

The ENA is planning to write a statement regarding this case and I am interested to see it. I'll get off my soap box now.

I feel for both the family and nurse involved in this situation. If a person does not do triage/ER there is no way they can fully understand this. I truly believe that triage is the most difficult job in the ER.

I cannot count how many times I have had a person come to the triage window write down "elbow pain" on the sign in slip, and then proceed to look in the waiting room and see how busy it is and scratch out "elbow pain" and write "chest pain". There are also those paitents that come in 3-4 times a week complaining of classic MI sx. I have also triaged minor complaints such as knee pain s/p knee replacement three weeks ago that just don't look right and take them back and they are having a STEMI. Can I tell you how many homeless people come in when it gets really cold outside with the complaint of chest pain because they know that it will get them a warm place to sleep for at least 24 hours.

There has been times when I have had 20 patients in the waiting room, every room in the ED was full, we have 12 patients in the hallway, two helicoptors are arriving 5 minutes apart, the ambulances won't stop rolling in, and 4 chest pains sign in at triage at the exact same time. Yes it would be nice to get all four of them back as the standard states. Is it going to happen? NO! I find it funny how we are so apt to slam the triage nurse.

I work in a level 1 trauma center and we do not have the resources available when things like this happen. Oh sure we could go on diversion, but that does not help. We cannot divert traumas because we are the only level one trauma center in the region, we cannot divert strokes/MI's becasue we are a national stroke/heart center. We cannot tell the walk in, sorry go to the community hospital across the street becasue we are on diversion. WE ARE IN A CRISIS HERE PEOPLE! Things like this are going to be more common until something or some laws are changed.

I failed to mention the fact that there has been a time when I had a mother and father bring in their six children because they found a dead bat in their house and they wanted vaccinated for rabies. Does any one have a clue how long it takes to triage a family of eight people? Try doing vitals on six kids all under the age of 9. It took me 50 minutes to triage this family. The family signed in at noon and around 12:30 a patient signed in with chest pain. I did not notice it because I was chasing around a preschool in the triage area. It was 20 minutes before I even got the chest pain in to the triage area.

We cannot tell people to go see their PCP's. We cannot get support from administration. They just tell us to do the best we can and then when this case came about our director had the nerve to email it to us. When we do have patients in our ED that finally get a bed assignment after setting there for 8 hours it often takes another 2 hours to get them upstairs, because the floors are working short/busy or whatever. We cannot make the general public understand that becaue their child vommited once three hours ago it does not mean that they should bring them to the ER. Oh and just because you arrive to my ED by ambulance does not mean that you are going to get rushed back to a bed. Many of our ambulance patients are brought in and triaged just like walk ins. We even have doctors offices that do direct admits from their office and close at 5:00 so they bring the patient over to the ED in a wheel chair to wait for their room upstairs because they don't want to pay their staff overtime. It is a sad situation that health care is in. Especially emergency departments and ER nurses.

The ENA is planning to write a statement regarding this case and I am interested to see it. I'll get off my soap box now.