My mother had to go to the hospital yesterday to have some sort of procedure done with her heart. Apparently they had an appointment, but ended up waiting 7 hours only to be told, "come back two months later". My dad (he's a very short tempered man) blew a fuse and the hospital let them come back today to do whatever my mom needed. (Sorry, I don't have all the details)
I am on the pathway to becoming a nurse and understand things like these happen and health care professionals will have to encounter angry family members. I don't understand, however, WHY these things happen. If my parents had an appointment, why would they have to wait 7 hours? My aunt had a seizure suddenly a while back and had to wait 8+ hours at the ER, and I suppose that's a little more... "understandable" (not sure if that should be the appropriate word) since it happened so suddenly.
I guess what I'm asking is what is happening behind the scenes. Is a 5+ hours wait the usual? I live in the south bay area (San Jose) if that piece of information helps.
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
I work in a city hospital, where 7 hours can easily be the norm for waiting to be seen in our clinics. Also, it is of no surprize that many times, a person may have to wait 6 months to see a dietitican, dermatologist, etc, due to overcrowding and the attending physicians for these sub-specialty clinics are only working for one or two days a week, half days at that. It has been overbook the appointments, then, first come, first serve. Horrible, I know...
"I'm just wondering, how do you keep your professional composure when encountering an angry family member/patients, or when all resources are taken and you are left with yourself? "
pyunny triage is to me, the most stressful place to be. We could have a whole thread on triage and how to handle/not handle all the craziness that occurs out there! Read the ER threads. I am amazed every time I'm out there at the insensitive, rude and very selfish people that believe they have the right to walk in the door with any complaint, get a number and be seen in the order in which they arrived. Everyone wants to know how long the wait is and first off it is against policy to even answer that question and honestly I can't. I know how many people are waiting,.but I can't control what is going on in the back with pts. It may look like it's starting to clear out and all of a sudden we get three EMS units with critical pts and everyone gets pushed back again!
I try to explain that people who are actively dying go first. Those who could die soon or have very severe life changing injuries go next. I do understand that your 3yr old has an earache and I do understand that you've been up with her for the last two nights and she and you are both miserable,....but she isn't gonna die in the next three hours from an ear infection and the baby that just came in blue, unable to breathe because of an asthma attack will die if we don't help her.
Some people just don't get it and I often want to walk them back there to see us trying to intubate that blue 3 yr old or trying to stablize the man who was just hit by a car and is missing an arm. ALas I can't do that,..but I've been known to speak a bit louder to my co workers about "wow,..I hope that 16 yr old girl makes it,..she was going awfully fast and wasn't wearing her seat belt,.did you see Mom,.she has lost it".
Sometimes you can only do what you can do and just apologize for the wait. We have a pre treatment area and can draw labs, order x rays, ekgs and sometimes give fluids and meds per protocol. That helps a bit. You can't make everyone happy,.just chart what you've done, what you've said and hope for the best.
ER waits are directly related to, among other things, the shortage of LTC beds...LTC facilities are full with longer-living pts, pt's who are approved for placement are not well enough to return home and are "taking up" acute care beds; admitted ER pts are waiting for their acute care beds, and you're waiting a zillion hours to have your laceration stitched. Lobby for + + funding for continuing care facilities!!
I'm doing my ER rotation now. I've been in the ER for 21 hours and I can attest that the ER nurses work their rear ends off. I worked my rear end off and loved every minute of it. Granted, I did very little to help since I'm still a student, but the nurses were grateful for my help.
Their rooms were full, so they had beds stacked in the hallway. When a bed became available, one of the hall beds was moved to a room. Vitals were taken every hour on the patients, as well as a blood sugar upon admission if the patient had a history of diabetes.
It was awesome to watch them all pull together as a team when a major trauma came in, and how they were all so calm during the crisis. They had such a calming influence that I never once felt stressed like I do when I'm working the floor.
My mother had to go to the hospital yesterday to have some sort of procedure done with her heart. Apparently they had an appointment, but ended up waiting 7 hours only to be told, "come back two months later".
The good news is that she is stable enough to wait. Most likely what happened was that they had an emergent case; i.e. someone who is NOT stable enough to wait, and is actively trying to die. That your mother can wait for this procedure and is not going to die if she doesn't have it immediately should be of some comfort. Some other person and their family was not so lucky on that day. I hope they had a good outcome.
For one of my surgeries I was waiting 5 hours because my doc was new to my hospital and was used to a faster patient turnover (cleaning the OR and getting it ready for the next patient)
pagandeva2000, LPN
7,984 Posts
I work in a city hospital, where 7 hours can easily be the norm for waiting to be seen in our clinics. Also, it is of no surprize that many times, a person may have to wait 6 months to see a dietitican, dermatologist, etc, due to overcrowding and the attending physicians for these sub-specialty clinics are only working for one or two days a week, half days at that. It has been overbook the appointments, then, first come, first serve. Horrible, I know...