(please note that "love" is inside the "asterisks of sarcasm.")
I LOVE it when I'm insanely busy in triage with 20 people yet to be even triaged and my phone rings and it's an irate woman screaming at me about how her granddaughter has been in the waiting room for FIFTY-ONE MINUTES and was SENT IN BY HER PEDIATRICIAN because she is VERY SICK and WHY IS SHE WAITING SHE NEEDS TO SEE A DOCTOR RIGHT NOW! (Note: the kid has a cold. She's not feeling well. No one is, including me, lady.) Where is this woman calling from? The waiting room? No. FLORIDA.
I LOVE it when, in the evening, all the relatively healthy twenty- and thirtysomethings come out. They plunk down in my triage chair, and say, "MAN I am really SICK!" Did you take anything for your fever? No. Go home, take some NyQuil or TheraFlu, get a blanket and some soup, and watch some TV for a couple of days. If you are not sicker than the triage nurse, then you are not sick.
I LOVE it when an attending doctor from upstairs brings her kid in with a small chin laceration after a fall and demands to be hustled straight back into the pediatric ER for stitches sooner than the truly sick kids: the asthmatics, the dehydrated vomiters/diarrhea kids, the febrile infants. Thank goodness the pediatric attending in charge rolls her eyes when seeing the triage and says, "She can wait."
I LOVE IT when medical administration calls me up and tells me a "VIP" is coming in for a fever, and that it would be nice if said VIP "had a good experience" at our fine hospital, and that she wants me to use the one sort of private room in the ER for him when he comes. And could we expedite his labs and tests please. That's the one room we have left, and we tend to leave it open for true emergencies or people who come in on ventilators or who need resuscitation. Yeah. Well, I'd like the septic patients and the stroke notification and the STEMI codes to have expedited labs and have a "good experience" at our fine hospital, ie, I'd like them to continue being alive.
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5 comments:
Fun.
Why is it, no matter what country you work in, and what kind of socio-economic status the majority of your population hails from, and the average cost of a visit to your ER....
....all staff have the same bloody experience?
Maybe there really are only so many personalities in existance...
...and they've all come through triage
Jess, I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Triage: it's like being in a cafe in Paris (ie, if you sit there long enough, the whole world will walk by).
Except without the great coffee or cheese or wine.
Urgh! I can't stand the VIP's. At our hospital the admin calls to say that a "board member" is on his way and can we expdite. I say yes, assuming there are no serious emergencies going on. Inevitibly they are a pain in the ass regardless of how nice and fast we are.
Go home, take some NyQuil or TheraFlu, get a blanket and some soup, and watch some TV for a couple of days.
That's what I do with a cold/flu/virus. Works as well as antibiotics.
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