I have come to the conclusion that we have the worst ER in our large city in Canada.We used to have 2 and now we have one, the other was turned into a LTC facility.
Our city has over 120,000 people and a doctor shortage. I have witnessed some very bad things in the last few years.
Aside from my allergic reaction to toradol I was also left sitting on a bed with no rails with a head injury (I actually fell off the bed!), And my first visit in three years as a patient was last week and this is what I saw. I went in for severe chest pain and high BP. I took it at home and it was 147/94 which is crazy high for me. I was also wheezing (asthma) and my Pulse Ox was 94%. I waited for 5 hours in the waiting room. By the time I got in I needed a ventolin treatment.
In the waiting room I observed FILTH, it was so dirty, dirty floor, chairs, the windows all smeared and garbage spewed about.One family had 10 people with them in the waiting room. There was a girl puking on the floor into a bag from kidney stones and I could smell it.
People where standing on the sides with bleeding wounds.I looked around and thought, is this really Canada? I got an EKG, he wanted to draw blood and I said that I would go to my doc the next day.
The healthcare system is in bad, bad shape.I honestly felt like I was in a 3rd world country.The nurses where all rude and mean and while I was in the exam room someone brought muffins to the desk.I saw 5 of them sitting there for almost 1/2 an hour. Yes I understand that maybe it was the first time they sat down all day but I pay enough taxes to get timely care.They must all hate to work there as the attitudes just sucked.
There is a difference in healthcare in a socialized medicine country versus our system in the USA. Not better or worse, just different. I am very sorry for the problems you have experienced. Is there any chain of command or ladder to climb to complain about the care?
GeriatricSunshine, I hope you are now feeling better. A couple of comments ...
The vital signs you listed were not critical. I have no doubt that you were feeling badly, and that BP may very well be significantly above your baseline. But as you described the full waiting room, it may have been the case that all available beds were tied up w/other patients whose BP may have been 210/100, or 88/50, or whose O2 sats were in the 70s on room air. The reality of nearly all ERs is that demand for care often exceeds supply, so triage protocols are in place to allow appropriate priortization of patient care.
If you experience active chest pain again in the future, I would suggest that it is important that you have blood labs drawn at that time, not the next day. I have had a number of patients whose EKGs were unremarkable, but their labs showed elevated cardiac enzymes.
Both the Canadian & US health care systems have significant strengths and significant weaknesses that will not be solved overnight.
I encourage you to take the time to fill out any follow-up hospital surveys provided, or to write a letter directly to the appropriate hospital staff as has already been suggested. Be specific in your comments, and focus them on things that could possibly be improved, such as housekeeping issues and bed rails.
Thanks for the advice and I have done so, I as well as many others in my city. The paper always prints the nice letters but never prints the truth about our ER.
I am an asthmatic as well. I have had my lung collapse twice and I have been in the intensive care twice for these issues. My doctor always told me to let them now if I was having chest pain and wheezing at the same time.I guess the last time I was in intensive care that was how it started.This time one of the nurses actually told me "You are too young for a heart attack" I am 30 and one of my best friends had one at 25 and died.
By the time I actually got in to the room my vital signs where much sketchier and I had a temperature. I was wheezing and felt like an elephant was sitting on me. You have to have asthma to know how horrible that is. If I had got in a little sooner it would not have progressed to that and that is my point.
The mandate in our ER (or it is supposed to be), is that patients with any resp symptoms such as heavy wheezing or chest pain are to be seen within 15mins and given treatment within 20 minutes. I waited hours and yes my vitals may have not been that bad, but the lack of care was what put me in intensive care last time and that is not going to happen again.
I am not so blind that I cannot see what is happening around me. When I went in there where 5 empty beds and when I walked out there where 5 empty beds.There where 4 doctors on and 22 people in the waiting room.
Working in an ER/ED has got to be one of the most stressful roles in nursing. With all the things you see coupled with the lack of resources (it happens in the US, too) I hardly blame ER/ED nurses for being bitter and harried. I imagine it's a job you do for a very short amount of time so you don't burn out on nursing completely. What's sad is that you pay $300.00 (Canadian) for a year's worth of health care and in the US we're lucky if we get a $300.00/month premium on insurance, yet our ER/ED departments are much like yours, lacking in resources. I'd say the US system isn't working well, either.....but I don't blame that on the nurses at all. If the CEOs gave up their yearly raises, maybe the hospitals could afford to hire some more cleaning staff.......:uhoh21:
My vitals weren't so bad when I went in they sure as heck where after hours in the waiting room.
Maybe if I lived in the US people would be coming in with gunshot wounds and gang crime but I live in a small city in Canada. As I said there may be a lot of people who treat it as a health clinic, answer this, should I NOT have come with asthma and chest pains? Should I have stayed home.
As for being bitter and angry, go ahead but don't think for a second that the fact that you don't make enough, the doctors hate you, you are tired is a reason to treat people badly.
For the Americans here, we do not have socialized medicine in Canada. That would mean that the government owned and operated the medical system. It doesn't. We have a single payer system and that payer is the government and the money comes from our income taxes. Most doctors are in private practice, singly or in groups; the rest are employed by clinics or hospitals. Hospitals are nearly all non-profit corporations. Non-hospital medical labs are privately owned. Physiotherapy clinics may be private or hospital based. Nursing homes are usually privately operated, but some are municipal. We all have a health card which is presented when we require care and the bill is sent to the provincial insurer, which here in Ontario is the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). OHIP does have set amount for services and that it what it pays but then so do your HMOs.
The plan covers all medically necessary services, part of long term care in a nursing home, drugs for hospital patients, seniors and those with very high drug costs and some medical devices .
As for the cost, as I mentioned above, it comes out of taxes. I think the latest known cost for the whole country is about $2,800 per person. The $300 amount mentioned in an earlier post is a special "health" tax. The Ontario government had promised during an election campaign not to raise the income tax but found, once it was in office, that it was going to run a large deficit. Since it had promised not to it couldn't raise the income tax rates so it instituted the "health'' tax instead. Same difference!
Please never say never. It does happen just ask about 25% of the population of Canada. This is a problem with the whole healthcare system. The problem I have is the nurses taking out their frustrations on patients. No one has acknowledge the million threads of complaining about patients, discriminating against patients on here.Maybe if nurses could put themselves in the postion of the patient things could change.I have had plenty of great nurses and plenty of downright nasty nurses.
We need to keep this thread on target. Geriatric Sunshine - I hope you get some resolution for your complaints. Take care. This thread has run its course.
traumaRUs, MSN, APRN
87 Articles; 21,287 Posts
There is a difference in healthcare in a socialized medicine country versus our system in the USA. Not better or worse, just different. I am very sorry for the problems you have experienced. Is there any chain of command or ladder to climb to complain about the care?