The following essay relates to very disturbing and distressing matters. Many may find the contents of this essay to be shocking. Please be prepared.
I recently brought a patient to a hospital emergency room (ER), someone who was suffering from suspected food poisoning and who was very ill. Unfortunately, the events that transpired during our several hours present were astonishingly inappropriate and unprofessional.
1) First issue:
We were told to be seated in the waiting room where it was 1½ hours before a technician called the patient in to have a blood sample taken. Shortly later, back in the waiting area, the patient suddenly needed to get to the nearest rest room from which in a few moments, the emergency alarm cord was pulled in a call for help.
When I saw the flashing red light, I ran into that rest room to find the patient in a toilet stall and on the floor, unable to stand and having just vomited blood into the toilet bowl. I sought help from hospital staff who did NOT respond and who inexplicably took umbrage with me for having asked for their aid. There was no apparent regard for the apparent medical emergency.
It was a security guard who had the common sense and the decency to render assistance by bringing a wheelchair so that the patient could be brought out from that toilet stall.
It was then another two hours before the patient was eventually brought in for medical attention.
2) Second issue:
A young woman was brought to the admissions desk in a wheelchair while in terrible pain, curled up in a near-fetal position, crying and pleading for help. Her two companions suspected appendicitis. Instead of immediate medical care, she was told she would have to wait in the waiting room because there were four patients ahead of her.
Finally, someone else of hospital staff appeared and upon seeing that situation, took that woman in for admission.
3) Third issue:
The above mentioned food poisoning patient's medical tests indicated that although there had been much suffering and that the suffering was likely to continue further, there was no medical danger and that the patient could be safely released to go home. As the time had become late, I asked about, and was told in response, that ER hours for patients' visitors would not be a problem because there was no official time limit for visitors in the ER, only a seven PM limit for visitors to hospital rooms elsewhere in the facility. The patient's attending physician actually wanted me to stay at hand while preparations were made for discharge and release.
Unfortunately, the supervisory "Charge Nurse" in the ER made a sudden and apparently arbitrary decision that I could not stay, that I could not comply with the doctor's wishes since the time was past seven PM and that I would have to leave, not to go back to the waiting room, but to exit the building altogether and wait in the parking lot until all discharge procedures had been carried out.
A clearly embarrassed security guard informed me that there was no choice.
The attending physician spoke up on our behalf to the "Charge Nurse" but to no avail. Because of that "Charge Nurse" acting with apparent authority-intoxication, and in my view with sadism, I was forced to leave the building for what turned out to be fifteen minutes. Upon my being telephoned to return, I re-entered the ER where I saw no apparent difference in occupant density of the ER areas.
To my knowledge, no legal actions are planned in light of any of the above although I can envision someone else under the same circumstances seeking legal redress.
I have brought these matters to hospital administrative attention in the hope that staff misconduct of the kind I have described would be properly addressed and corrected.
Part of me thinks it is unlikely.
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