On the happy side- in a country with socialized medicine, a patient with appendicitis would have to wait a much, much longer period of time- days, even- just to get into a room, much less be treated. You may fault American ER care all you wish- but I have been to multiple countries to study emergency care and I would still take my kid to an American ER first, bar none.
Regarding waiting after being taken back: the pace of the ER treatment is driven to a very large extent by the pace at which the diagnostic studies go. It's frustrating as a nurse as well to have to wait for the lab to process a blood test, or for the Radiologist to get around to posting his findings, or for a room to open up on a patient care unit. We can't change that. But any nurse/MD worth his/her salt will do everything possible to keep the patient/family informed and comfortable.
I cannot really say any fairer than that. I am sorry that your experiences were unpleasant ones.
When my son took a nasty hit to his elbow recently, I was allowed to go in with him when the x-rays were taken. We stood in the booth and the digital x-rays were wonderful! Obviously there was no break or dislocation.
I realize these have to be read by “someone,” but FIVE HOURS later, we were called in to be informed that my son had not broken his elbow.
WHY?
We didn’t even want to see the doctor if there was no break. We only needed to know the result of the x-ray (because of my son’s history).
Once they finally told us what we had all seen with our own eyes, we RAN out of the ER. The doctor was calling out “do you want a sling or pain med?”-—give me a break!
OTOH, once I was sitting there with a bone poking out of my leg and I also waited 3 hours to even get an x-ray, a couple more for it to be read, more in the back room to see the doctor to tell me I had a broken leg (oh, really?), then sent to the cast room, where I waited a few more hours to have a cast put on.
The whole thing was a nightmare. The pain was incredible and sitting there with no help whatsoever, while babies with runny noses were called back, was shameful. And I’d had no choice but to bring our own young children with us to the ER; they were there all those hours, in those gross conditions, for absolutely no reason.
It really stunk. I take no solace from the fact that it is worse in other countries.
I understand exactly what triage is, but have yet to see it applied in any way that makes sense. How can a patient with an obviously broken leg not be taken back immediately for an x-ray? Or offered a place to lay down rather than having to sit in the waiting room?
Since no one really knows what’s wrong with the vast majority of patients when they come in, and the vast majority probably have relatively nonspecific symptoms, I suspect that triage is frequently a lot less exact than “a kidney stone trumps migraine,” etc.