Posted on 01/14/2007 1:55:28 AM PST by 60Gunner
Emergency Room Nursing Stories Ping.
Let me guess. Did they have insurance? Should they have been allowed in the door or just kicked out?
However, the Director of Emergency Services at my hospital did a survey last year and found out that nine of ten families who visited the ER seeking family care had insurance. Not welfare insurance, mind you - good insurance.
Some people treat the ER like a doctor's office. They come in with the rationale that if it is an Emergency Room, we must naturally assume that everyone who comes in has a real emergency. Then they get angry when we triage them and they have to wait.
You'd think that being ill would at least make them less animated. Apparently not.
The kind of vulgar behavior you describe is becoming more commonplace by the day. Too many people can't manage themselves or their children in public. They seem to feel "entitled".
The minute you described the family, I recognized them. I've been treating them for years! I can't believe you were able to refuse to see the little darlings before they were properly triaged, in line. At the ER I used to work, every pt was sent a survey, and any bad results from those surveys would get the nurse written up immediately. It didn't have to be right, or fair, or even make sense. It just had to be a bad survey with your signature on the ER form. I've gotten in trouble before for following protocol just like this, because the family (it doesn't have to be the pt) filled out the survey and said that I was rude, or made them wait too long, etc. When the real stuff comes in, like a medflight trauma, or a real time-is-muscle MI, the petty stuff waits, and that generates even MORE negative surveys. Needless to say, I don't work there anymore. I left after turning down their 2.5% raise, to accept a 14.00/hour raise, working in a CVICU.
Two days ago the nurse came out of one of our rooms shaking her head. The patients two kids were SWINGING from the curtain. Lucky the whole thing including the bar holding it up didn't come crashing down. Mom just sat there like a lump, never said boo to the little hellions.
I think that there should be a means test.
A friend of mine sells insurance. He said he often gets calls from people who are pregnant and want insurance.
Why didn't the people pay for insurance earlier? Could it be because they are irresponsible?
Our medical system is in real financial trouble because of the mindset that no matter how irresponsible everyone deserves medical care. I want people to pay for what they get, or be forced to pay as much as they can afford.
I also do not believe that a person who is homosexual and enganges in butt perversions or who shares dirty needles has any right to free medical care. The people who have AIDs are taking up billions of dollars of research and medical care. (Yes there is a small percentage of people who were born to an AIDs person, they should get medical care.) But, the people who have Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, Diabetes, Cancer, and dozens of other diseases largely did not engage in risky behavior and should not have their medical care and research dollars siphoned off to the benefit of people who engage in irresponsible and risky behaviors.
In other words if you give medical care away without really trying to get back some or all of the money to people who expect it for free, then you are breaking the back of our medical system.
Did I answer your question?
Quite succinctly, thank you.
I don't have the luxury of being able to stand off at a distance and consider the social and ethical causality for the single mother of three who is lying blue and pulseless on my table. She's blue and she's pulseless, and according to my nursing ethos, that's the Big Deal of the Day.
Should people who get into trouble secondary to irresponsibility somehow be made to pay for their care? If so, how? Should we turn people away when we determine that their stupidity caused them to come to us in the first place? Who determines the threshold? Insurance companies? Perish the thought.
Who would you rather have taking care of you when you slip on that bar of soap you absent-mindedly left on the shower floor, causing you to break your hip? A nurse who does not determine the standard of practice as a function of her patient's intelligence, or an insurance claims adjuster?
Exactly!...... I had a boy who would attack my 2 younger sons whenever the 2 older ones weren't around. This kid would hit my boys with sticks or whatever he had handy. I would call the mother and she would hang up on me. I would call the police and they would stop the fight and tell me there wasn't much they could do but take a report until one of my sons was really hurt.... One day my elderly neighbor took a broom and she beat the boy for hitting my sons. No police ever came, the boy never hit them again or even came back into the neighborhood..... And to this day whenever it snows my boys shovel her out and make sure her garbage cans go to the street. She told me that was how she dealt with bullies. She is usually a very sweet old lady but she just got tired of this bully.
It's people like that, that make going to the ER truly unpleasant.
I've been to an ER twice in the past 4 years. Once with a broken toe and once with severe bruising on my shin.
The toe was on a Sunday afternoon during a blizzard, and I barely made it home again. That didn't stop the noisy, unruly children from finding the place.
The shin was a Friday night. I had slipped on a train platform and caught my leg between the platform and the train, and I was a bit concerned about the damage. No children this time, just some people acting like they were at a party.
lolol.. good one
Did I say, thanks for your hard work?
I can relate, as I've heard lots of stories. Most of my extended family are in the medical field. We have RN's, LPN's, imaging techs, ER techs, an OR nurse (male), one hospital administrator, one physicians assistant, and I'm sure a few specialties I can't remember.
Out of a generational spread of about ten years, there are about 25 people in my extended family. Only three of us did not choose a medical profession. One is a Postmaster, one is a bank VP, and there is me. We're the black sheep of the family.
That single mother (even if her color is blue) should get immediate medical care.
But I would go after her and make her accountable for her medical care. If her behavior caused her medical problems then some pretty tough treatment to correct her behavior would be part of her medical care. I am not part of her village.
I really thing we are talking about two issues which are related but different.
1. In your world of the ER, care should not be withheld. 2. In my world where people are suffering from life threatening diseases (that they did not cause)I see huge medical resources being siphoned off to people whose behavior caused their own problems.
60Gunner -
Thanks. I really like your stories. Publish 'em.
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