ER Visit
This past weekend, I had the opportunity you might say to spend a couple of hours in the ER with one of my patients. The family had called me at home concerned their family member was having a stroke. They were at the ER and it was overflowing with patients and families. They were concerned they would be ignored.
I called the ER and spoke with the physician. The triage personnel adequately assessed the patient and family concerns and brought him back immediately even before I had gotten off the phone with the physician. This was excellent triage care and assessment by the staff.
Since I was cutting trees and trimming my hillside at the time of the phone call, I jumped in the shower, and then headed down to the ER. On my arrival, the situation was worse than described. The ER doctors were frustrated because they couldn’t get patients back to be examined and couldn’t get patients up to the floors because of lack of beds. There were at least 19 more patients waiting to be registered.
Since my patient had a potentially life-threatening condition, they shuffled beds and patients and got him into a room.
The nursing staff was exceptional. Even though they were extremely busy, each one performed their jobs in exemplary fashion. They assisted me and my patient and expedited his care and we were able to get his workup completed in about an hour and have him ready for the Intensive Care Unit. He was found to have a subdural hematoma and bleed in his brain. He has done extremely well thanks to the excellent care of the ER staff.
Although the staff is working in extremely difficult situations with seemingly little support and understanding from those in positions of power, I commend their courage, fortitude and positive attitudes they display.
The new ER is scheduled to open on May 1st. This should help with getting patients into the ER to be evaluated, but if the bed situation upstairs isn’t rectified, it will be a mute point.
I called the ER and spoke with the physician. The triage personnel adequately assessed the patient and family concerns and brought him back immediately even before I had gotten off the phone with the physician. This was excellent triage care and assessment by the staff.
Since I was cutting trees and trimming my hillside at the time of the phone call, I jumped in the shower, and then headed down to the ER. On my arrival, the situation was worse than described. The ER doctors were frustrated because they couldn’t get patients back to be examined and couldn’t get patients up to the floors because of lack of beds. There were at least 19 more patients waiting to be registered.
Since my patient had a potentially life-threatening condition, they shuffled beds and patients and got him into a room.
The nursing staff was exceptional. Even though they were extremely busy, each one performed their jobs in exemplary fashion. They assisted me and my patient and expedited his care and we were able to get his workup completed in about an hour and have him ready for the Intensive Care Unit. He was found to have a subdural hematoma and bleed in his brain. He has done extremely well thanks to the excellent care of the ER staff.
Although the staff is working in extremely difficult situations with seemingly little support and understanding from those in positions of power, I commend their courage, fortitude and positive attitudes they display.
The new ER is scheduled to open on May 1st. This should help with getting patients into the ER to be evaluated, but if the bed situation upstairs isn’t rectified, it will be a mute point.
posted by Anonymous at 6:11 AM
3 Comments:
One of the major problems in the ED continues to people who use it as a clinic for routine visits, thereby clogging up rooms needed for true emergencies like your patient. If FEMA would be willing to hire extra ER doctors or a nurse practictioner to run a fast track for non-emergent cases, emptying out the ER would be much easier also. Another issue that needs to addressed is timely discharge of patients from the hospital and proper transfer of patients out of ICU and PCU to med-surg beds whether monitored or not.
Sooooo, this patient simply called you at home and you JUMPED into the shower and RUSHED to the ER huh? Was this a personal friend? Relative? Lover? How does one get that type of service out of a physician nowadays. We tried for two months to get you to write a simple prescription for a lift chair for my mother-in-law (she’s under your care at Landmark). We needed the prescription to get Medicare to pay for the lift mechanism. We finally gave up and just paid full price for the chair. By the way… Why don’t you give me your personal home number. It would be so much easier calling you at home rather than leaving messages all over town. I’ll await your response. Don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath.
Concerned RN
No disagreements on the abuses of the ER. Requiring patients to have even a very minimum co-pay to utilize the ER would help a lot. This issue was discussed with Connie Sipes and Bill Cochran at our last meeting.
Mr. Daniel,
I believe our office provides personal service as good or better than any other for our patients.
My phone number is listed in the telephone book. It takes very little effort to look it up. I am not sure who your mother is, but I write prescriptions for lift chairs the day I recieve the message. Evidently there is a communication problem. In addition, families stop by the office in person when there is a problem not being resolved. I do not recall you doing so. I make rounds at Landmark like clockwork and am happy to talk with families. I do not recall meeting you there either. I have more than 5000 patients and try to provide personal service, but I cannot meet the needs when I am unaware of them. Who have you spoken to, because it hasn't been me.
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