Doglover

> This actually brought a smile to my face. I have an MBA but considered nursing school as a safety net in case I couldn't manage the difficult courses in business school. It doesn't take much brains to get thru nursing school, so it's a nice back-up if someone can't make it in a demanding profession.

I keep reading about the nursing shortage and all of the unemployed and homeless people out there. Maybe it would make a dent in these problems to provide training to the homeless and unemployed and send them to nursing school. It's a nice, easy job and the skills needed don't require much intellect. Heck, all they need to do is greet arriving Veterans as they and tell them to get off the stretcher and sit in a wheelchair.

Just curious, but how exactly can one successfully "demand" a stretcher if 3 nurses refuse and you are totally alone????? I have a close friend from a wealthy family who is a lawyer and her "demands" went unanswered, too. ER nurses have tremendous power over who gets medical care and who doesn't. Someday they will get old and sick. Asthma in teens is generally due to preventable lifestyle factors; it was quite rare prior prior to the 1980s.

> Such hatred and violent wishes against a suffering patient.

> It is extremely unusual for a teenager to be this sick. When I was in high school and college, none of my classmates were sick. The human body does not naturally give out until a person is well into their 70s or 80s, so your hypothetical example carries no weight. By the way, asthma in children/teens is often caused by cigarettes smoking in the household.

> This resident first saw my mother on the medical unit after she was admitted. He was NOT working in the ER. It took the attending ER doctor less than one hour to correctly diagnose her whereas the ER nurse took hours to bring the pain & nausea medicine.

> I repeatedly asked at least three nurses repeatedly for a stretcher for her to lie on and they flat out refused. Please keep in mind that I was ALONE; I did not have a husband or brothers and sisters with me. It is common knowledge that if a family member "DEMANDS" something it often backfires and they are forced to leave the ER and wait out in the waiting room. This happened to a friend of mine; she and her father were forced to stay in the waiting area while her mother was left ALONE for hours in some room in the ER. If I was out on a walk with my mother and someone pointed a gun and demanded I hand over my mother's purse, I would do so without an argument. This is not a question of "letting" someone take her purse; it is a question of survival and trying to get out of a dangerous situation unharmed. And in case anyone misses my point, I am equating the ER nurses with a lowlife mugger with a weapon. Just read some other postings here about families and visitors being forced to leave the ER for expressing anger or making "demands." By the way, the resident I mentioned saw my mother on the medical floor the next day. She receive pain & nausea medication VERY late at night the previous day in the ER, before she was transferred to a medical unit. The resident I mentioned was not working in the ER.

Many people on this board and elsewhere have suggested writing letters to the hospital and politicians about the way my parent was treated in the ER and the medical floor. Well, no amount of apologizing, increased funding, increased nursing staff, or after-the-fact "improvements" will ever change the needless misery inflicted on us by the ER nurses and those on the medical unit who failed to answer call lights, provide information or emotional support, or delivery trays on time. It is my mother who served as Nurse in the military during WWII and was in perfect health until 2 years ago. Unlike nurses today, nurses serving overseas in wartime worked extremely hard and did not have luxuries such as heated/air conditioned hospitals or a full contingent of security guards and police officers to step in at a moment's notice if a patient got unruly. Nurses serving in WWII and Viet Nam were often totally on their own and subject to grave dangers that nurses today can only imagine. One resident and the medical student who took care of my mother spent a great deal of time listening to her and learning about her experiences during WWII. I was moved to tears when the resident actually THANKED her and said, "We should all be grateful to people like you." At least he and the medical student showed respect and compassion. In contrast, when my mother arrived in the ER on a stretcher in agonizing pain, the cruel triage nurse immediately insisted she get off the stretcher and sit upright in a wheelchair! I tried to explain nicely that she was in terrible pain and needed to lie down even though there was a wait, but that nurse was devoid of humanity and insisted my mother get off the stretcher and sit up in a wheelchair in the waiting room. We waited 2 hours to be taken back and a total of 6 hours for pain & nausea medication. Instead of showing such heartless cruelty to an elderly Veteran who risked her life serving her country and who had used minimal health resources until 2 years ago, those ER nurses should have showed some respect and appreciation. For those who insist that ER nurses don't have time to ask patients if they are Veterans or the underlying cause of their illness, it takes all of 10 seconds to ask, "Are you a Veteran of a foreign War?" It would be poetic justice if the ER nurses and those others who failed to show appreciation and compassion were struck down by an equally painful, debilitating disease, forced to sit bolt upright in a wheelchair for hours, and deprived of pain and nausea medicine for 6 hours. Then maybe they would get a taste of their own medicine and justice would be served.

> This is a cruel insult. My family member got sick over the weekend, and I called the doctor on call who phoned in pain meds to the pharmacy, and I rushed out to pick them up. The pain persisted, so first thing Monday morning we showed up at the doctor's office and he prescribed anticonvulsants (trigeminal neuralgia pain is said to be WORSE than cancer pain). Still no relief, so back to the doctor on Wednesday who prescribed yet another medication. Things continued downhill so on Thursday evening after seeing two doctors in person earlier in the week, calling the on-call doc over the weekend, and trying various prescriptions my family member asked to be taken to the hospital. They were there for 4 days because they were so debilitated and dehydrated they needed IV's. They were also close to bedridden with pain for weeks afterwards. It is CRUEL to imply that a "trip to the doctor's office....would have proved faster relief" but yet another example of the lack of compassion and lack of medical knowledge among the nurses we encountered.

> You are right, hospitals and ERs are not hotels; they charge several times more per day than even luxury hotels but fail to provide timely, effective services for their Customers. I've read numerous postings where nurses angrily whine that hopsitals are not "the Hilton", etc. That's right, a room at the Hilton typically costs in the $100-$200 range whereas a hospital room starts at $1,000/day. It seems to me that nurses and other hospital employees have an obligation to deliver superior services than hotels. Why is it that hotel operators fielding hundreds of calls each day typically answer their Guests' phone calls on the 1st to 3rd ring whereas patients often wait and wait for someone to answer their call bell?

> Sooooooo, an obese person or cocaine addict who causes their own heart attack gets priority over a Veteran who risked their life serving their country? This is sickening but just another example of the disrespect and lack of appreciation shown to Veterans. Statistics show that 40% of the homeless are Veterans. Veterans who come to the ER should get top priority for services, especially if the pts triaged to #1 have lifestyle-related disorders.

> Actually, how one got their disease or injury is one of the most important factors in determining who is DESERVING of medical care and support from society. A smoker who got COPD, even if they did quit smoking, is still not blameless the way people with rare, cause-unknown neurological disorders. A pedestrian crossing when the light is in their favor who gets run over by a drunk driver is more deserving of care than an alcoholic or careless driver who causes their own automobile wreck. And yes, I think that some lives are more valuable than others and how one got a disease or injury should be a major factor in triage. It is downright insulting to all the Veterans who risked their lives serving their country to be forced to wait two hours sitting upright and six hours for pain and nausea medication.

Wouldn't bet on them sticking around long. With this sort of behavior their chances of having a career in medicine is very unlikely. >> The medical students we encountered were all very friendly and supportive, and took plenty of time to listen. In contrast, the nurses, who had ONLY 5 or 6 pts each, acted very rushed, as if they were doing us a favor by stopping by to talk. Well, it is the patients, families, and visitors (ie, the Taxpayers) who are their Employers, not the other way around. The reason there is such a high rate of violence in ERs and hospitals is because nurses and other health care workers fail to live up to their duty to provide good Customer Service and show appreciation to their Customers (I find the word, "patient" very degrading).

First of all, my family member was in perfect health until two years ago when stricken with a rare neurological disease which was NOT lifestyle-induced. Second and more important, they risked their life serving overseas during WWII and deserved some respect and appreciation from the ER nurses, not to be forced to lie in agony on a stretcher in an open corridor waiting hours for pain and nausea medication. It is high time that nurses and others started showing some appreciation for Veterans who have served their country, and it is an insult to them to give priority to some smoker with self-inflcted COPD or an obese, comatose diabetic who ate too many donuts and caused their own disease (not to mention squandering scarce resources).

I have read many different postings on various boards here where nurses seem to think it is OK for patients to wait for hours for pain and nausea medication. Well, it is NOT OK. Just because some other patient has a "life-threatening" ailment does not in the least justify having someone in agonizing pain and/or nausea lying in misery for hours. Many of these so-called "emergencies" that get triaged to the top are lifestyle-induced from obesity, smoking, drinking, drug abuse, and reckless driving. On the other hand, certain other illnesses in which the patient suffers severe pain are NOT due to lifestyle factors; they are random misfortunes that the patient did not create. Nurses and other health care workers (excluding those who are solely private pay) are obligated to serve the public, and that means patients and their families and visitors. I have read that one of the jobs of nurses is to "educate" patients about their disease and to provide emotional support and counseling about managing their illness. Funny thing, but when my loved one was in the hospital they received zero support or information from the nurses. All of the information was from the DOCTORS and the Internet.