I work in 3 different emergency departments as a midlevel provider (P.A.) and am amazed at the number of people who get past the triage with symptoms that should SCREAM "Heart!!!!!!! and yet sit for a long time without the pretreatment that you apropriately detailed in your post. The youngest cardiac death (not congenital) I have seen was a 19 year old who came in with cocaine related angina and signed out against medical advice when we pointed out his ischemic changes on is ekg. He went out and did another line of coke and blew his myocardium out and DIED. And, Yes, I am sick to death of all the "FREE" CARE" WE ARE HANDING OUT TO ILLEGALS. I don't mind treating life threatening problems but recently saw a "Protocitizen" who waited in our ER for 3 hours so I could treat his ATHLETES FOOT!!!.
I hear ya. It's becoming more frequent in my ER, too.
One of my friends used to tell me about the "womens" hospital
he had to train at, where a lot of the pregnant
women would come in and complain of stomach pain, and would
get a free sonogram. The suspicion was that many just wanted
to get a sonogram done, so would complain of symptoms which
a sonogram was needed for diagnosis...prety slick, no?
I personally knew a health professional, who pretended to
have a very sore neck, was wearing a brace, but what he
was doing was going around to different doctors, getting
prescriptions for opiate (read morphine) based painkillers.
We found out later, that on the day he got a potent opiate
based painkiller, that he had checked himself into a hospital
with chest pain (morphine is used to relieve the chest pain
as it is a decent vasodilator)...fortunately he was
fired from his position as soon as his behaviour was
discovered.
Why can't an ER turn away non-emergencies? After all, the title is EMERGENCY room, not athlete's foot room.