Drama: Life In the ER

Working in the ER is one of those glorified jobs that everyone thinks is exciting; blood, guts, gore and saving lives.

Let me tell you what working in the ER really is: Drama, politics, frustration, drug addicts, and frequent flyers.

Patients scream at you, spit on you, try to physically attack you, disrespect, and degrade you. ER staff are not human. We are robots who have no feelings. We enjoy making you wait 8 hours before you're seen, and 10 hours after you are seen. Yep, we actually do forget about you, and try to make your visit as miserable as possible. And you're not wrong to think we're all incompetent. That's totally true too!

Give me a break. Patients treat us like shit, and I think people behave this way because they CAN. They know that we can't "fight back" as it were, and that all they have to do is complain to administration and/or threaten lawsuit and the staff will suffer for a fairy tale complaint, and probably not have to pay their bill. They have the upper hand, because administration doesn't care about the truth or what it right, only with patient satisfaction (and in my experience, no patient is ever truly satisfied).

A lot of people will say, "well, people in the ER are sick, dying, injured and of course they're going to be a little grouchy! Wouldn't you be if you had to wait 6 hours to be treated while feeling bad?"

Most people do not, in fact, go to the ER when they are having an emergency. Most go for simple, piddly crap that could be taken care of at a doctor's office, or needs no treatment at all. The wait time is not due to the nurses. They have nothing to do with it most times. The reason everyone waits so long is because so many non-emergency patients are there taking up time and space for real patients with real problem. They yell and demand that we figure out why their backs have been hurting for 5 months, or 5 years. We are supposed to lay our hands on you and diagnose and cure. We are for emergency treatment and stabilization. Another reason, one of the biggest, is because labs and xrays often take more than 20 seconds to result. In fact, some of our most common labs take AT LEAST an hour to come back. On a busy day, you're lucky to see them in two. Another reason is that, unless you're in a large hospital in a large city, there may be only one doctor and one PA on duty, or only one doctor by himself. One doctor cannot see 10 patients at one time. You take into account that it takes at least 15 minutes per patient to see, evaluate, and order the proper diagnostic testing. By the time the 10th patient is seen, it's almost 2 hours later. And that's pushing it. Transfers, admissions, discharges, lacerations, speciality exams, i.e. ultrasounds, nuc med, MRIs, repeat ABGs, repeat labs, etc. all take up big chunks of time. Ambulance after ambulance coming in with chest pains, shortness of breaths, abd pains, falls, overdoses, car accidents, nursing home patients, the police coming in with people for blood alcohol levels and drug screens, psych patients and inmates. People coming to the ambulance bay wanting wheelchairs and stretchers...

Yes, it takes some time to see everyone and treat everyone. But nurses are saving your lives, and they deserve as much respect, and perhaps even more, than everyone else. People like to treat the ER staff like they aren't human because they have no idea what it takes not to just throw up your hands and say "fuck it!" and leave. They think they're entitled to special care because they're "sick" with no regard to the actual sick patient that we're trying to work with. They think they are more important because they have never learned to be respectful, wait their turn, and not expect the world handed to them on a silver platter.

And that's just the patients we see... stay tuned for Adventures in Psychic Emergency Care Through the Phone.