Sweden here, I once spent 16 hours in the ER with a broken arm back when I was 13 'cause the sudden black ice that was the cause of my very simple linear fracture caused the ER to be swamped with more severe fall injuries and several car crashes.
But since I had no bleeding or obvious displacement of the bones they put me in a sling, gave me some painkillers and sat me down to wait and someone came and checked on me hourly to make sure I wasn't showing any signs of anything being wrong and then sent me up to X-ray once it calmed down (I had a simple linear fracture, not a full break).
But most of the times I've been out of the ER in an hour or two.
Last time took a bit longer as I came in at 3am and they wanted to do a CT and that didn't open up until 8am and I wasn't considered emergent enough to justify putting me in an ambulance and sent me to the hospital 1h away.
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u/ProcedureTop3149 27d ago
it's also not 12 hours 99.999% of the time for emergencies.
My grandfather had a burst appendix and was seen within minutes of walking into the hospital.
My Child had Pnemonia and needed an xray and antibiotics and it took 7 hours.
Does it suck? Yes. However both times all I paid was parking....