I never, ever went to ER when I was a kid

Specialties Emergency

Published

We were sitting around talking last night at work. Another barely sick kid was in room 4 and it got us on the subject. I have a lot of kids and, in my many years of parenting only used the ER once, when my son split his sinuses open crashing into a dumpster on his bike, and required emergency surgery.

Then I realized, as a child, I had never been to the ER. When I was six years old I went head first falling off a bike while we were visiting family friends. I was knocked out for several minutes, I was later told. They brought me inside, I was bleeding, I remember waking up in my Mom's friend's arms, they were wiping blood off me. Then, they brought me over to their other friend's doctor husband's office and he stitched me up in the office, 5 stitches in my cheek and my chin too. He did a darned good job of it too, I don't have a scar. No head CT, they didn't have that back in 1964. I wore bandages over half my face for a week, I looked like a mummy.

When did people start going to ERs for totally stupid reasons? My mother would have never thought of bringing us to the ER for the sniffles.

Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.

I've been to the ER twice. Once for stitches when I fell on my face ice skating and the second time when I had appendicitis. My brothers went a few times each but they played hockey and football. My dad was a fire fighter so I think he was good at knowing what was an emergency.

I had a 5 year old patient come by ambulance for a "cough" that had started the night before. Assessment and vital signs were normal. The patient did not cough once while in our ER. He was discharged pretty quickly. This is why insurance is so expensive in the U.S.

My kids have been there a few times. Broken toe when it was slammed in the hinge of a tailgate. Horrible corneal abrasion that had the ER doc calling the opthmo specialist immediately. Foam sticker up the nose and non-visible (thanks, grandma!). Very icky finger lac that had unhinged 3/4 of his ring finger tip and fx'd the tip of the bone. A few rehydrates because my middle son full well believes in not becoming scarily ill until midnight and won't take a damned drop of fluids unless you hold him down and drip it in.

Until I stared nursing school, I had no idea our PCP will do rehydrate in the clinic. Sorry, not something they tout as an awesome feature. Besides, who is lucky enough to have kids that only get sick between 8-5? One urgent care in the area, and they only run 10am to 10pm.

Sometimes, people use the ER because they a) don't have a PCP or insurance to obtain a PCP or b) have no idea they can call a Dr past the hours of the clinic. My eye dr tells all his pts to call him day or night, w/d or w/e, and do NOT go to the ER. He doesn't like how they treat eye cases anyhow and wanted to stress his willingness to see them.

Specializes in ICU.

In our state urgent care clinics won't take medicaid so they have to go to the ER. That's just the way it is. So I know lots of kids that go to the ER for every little thing because it takes a couple of days to get in to the peditrician and they end up going to the ER to get the sniffles taken care of. You can pretty much blame the government for the problems in the ER. And it's about to get a hundred times worse.

Specializes in ED Clinical and Documentation.

My first visit to the ER was when I was about 31 and it was because I was having chest pain that would not go away as it turned out I was hypokalemic and had the worse case of acid reflux.

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

When I was growing up, the pediatrician would meet us in the office at all hours of the night for things such as stitches. They always reserved several appointments for urgent needs and didn't over-schedule. Urgent care didn't exist in my area, but then again, if docs would meet patients in the office whenever, what did we need an urgent care for?

While I believe that the combination of unwillingness to pay copays, the desire for instant gratification, and the customer service orientation of health care has contributed to this, so has the changing practice of primary care. A few years ago, I had a raging sinus and double ear infection that had me absolutely miserable. Called my PCP to make an appointment. The first available? 9 days later. I ended up at the local urgent care. However, where would I have gone if that wasn't an option? Probably the ER. By the time I did make it to the urgent care center the next day, I was barely capable of functioning (had to call my mother from an hour away for a ride), running a fever of 103.4, and nearly screaming in pain.

Primary care has changed. In order to be profitable, providers have to squeeze in as many patients as possible. No more reserving appointments throughout the day for patients who don't need the ER but do need to be seen. No more meeting patients at the office after hours. So, where do we expect those people to go?

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I used to do medical transcription for an ER. I would say 80% were not true emergencies. I did see a lot of the cases were people with no insurance, so they waited until the problem was bad and went to the ER.

Anyway, the most ridiculous chart I typed was for a completely healthy 6mo baby...not a single thing wrong. She was brought in because she had been near someone who had a cold. So they spent a bunch of time in a germy ER for nothing.

precisely! that was my point, up thread. WE weren't in the ED because our docs were available to us.

When I was growing up, the pediatrician would meet us in the office at all hours of the night for things such as stitches. They always reserved several appointments for urgent needs and didn't over-schedule. Urgent care didn't exist in my area, but then again, if docs would meet patients in the office whenever, what did we need an urgent care for?

While I believe that the combination of unwillingness to pay copays, the desire for instant gratification, and the customer service orientation of health care has contributed to this, so has the changing practice of primary care. A few years ago, I had a raging sinus and double ear infection that had me absolutely miserable. Called my PCP to make an appointment. The first available? 9 days later. I ended up at the local urgent care. However, where would I have gone if that wasn't an option? Probably the ER. By the time I did make it to the urgent care center the next day, I was barely capable of functioning (had to call my mother from an hour away for a ride), running a fever of 103.4, and nearly screaming in pain.

Primary care has changed. In order to be profitable, providers have to squeeze in as many patients as possible. No more reserving appointments throughout the day for patients who don't need the ER but do need to be seen. No more meeting patients at the office after hours. So, where do we expect those people to go?

Specializes in ER, ICU.

One of my favorite patients was an elderly woman with a huge dent in her skull (obviously long healed). When I asked her she said that when she was five, she was with her grandfather in a Model T and they were T-boned by a train. So she had an open skull fracture, with a long period of unconsciousness, and got out of bed 5 days later. Who needs a CT scan? :)

Specializes in Med/surg.

I definitely agree with Sweet_Wild_Rose and morte...

Apparently I went to the ER went I was about 3 or 4 years old. I was at my great-grandparents house and mom/grandma/great-grandma were in the kitchen while I was supposed to be in the living (I think with my great-grandpa). I don't remember why, but I wandered into my great-uncle's bedroom, into his bathroom (because since I wasn't allowed in there by myself, I guess I was taking the advantage to be nosy) and started looking at all the stuff on the counter. My great-grandpa and great-uncle used old-school shavers with razor blade packs. The last thing I remember was looking at it and picking it up... I managed to slice my right thumb tip to the bone. I don't remember anything, but I have the scar and hyper-overprotective mom because of it.

Other than that, I went when I was 16 because of sharp pain in my lower abd-- mom thought it might be appendicitis. It was gastroenteritis, I think.

Oh yes, and my little one has only went one time (she's 5 now). She had been sick for what seemed like weeks with a cough, and when I had taken her to her pedi, the Dr. said that "Oh, no, she should be fine." I only remember that my daughter was miserable. Lo and behold the weekend came with a fever and more trouble breathing-- off to the ER. Pneumonia! Guess who was on call? :sniff:

((PS-- Nurses of Miami Children's ER will forever rock in my book, and not just because of how they handled my daughter.))

I'm trying to remember if I went to the ER as a child. My parents were poor, and didn't have health insurance, so I don't remember any trips to the doctor or ER until I was 17 for an abscess. Then, I did go a few times in my 20s (still no insurance) for a dental abscess, gallbladder, kidney stone and a couple of other issues I would have gone to the doctor for had I a doctor and money to afford one. The last trip I made was when our accu-check machine at work wouldn't read my blood sugar - just read "HI" and I wasn't diabetic (well, I was diagnosed that day). So yeah, I've been quite a few times in my life, but I don't think it qualifies me as a "frequent flyer."

My ds has been for asthma as a baby and for an abscess. The abscess he had required an I&D and 3 day stay. In retrospect the asthma incidents could have been handled the next day but I was suffering from new mom syndrome.

Specializes in FNP, ONP.

I've never been. No member of my immediate family has ever been. One the one hand, we have all been lucky never to have had any serious accidents or injuries. On the other, we are not stupid and know how to do conservative management of routine illnesses at home. We don't go running off to the PCP for nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, coughs or sniffles either. Everything goes away in 7-10 days, lol. Come on people, man up.

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