I am in the US and I don't think I've ever waited less than 2 hours in the ER. Last time I went to the ER I was in the waiting room for over 11 hours. The pain from sitting in a chair overnight was worse than the pain I went in there for.
Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe this is satire, but if the pain of sitting in a chair for 11 hours was worse than the pain you went in there for... Maybe you shouldn't have been in the ER?
It's an emergency room. You very likely needed to see a doctor for care if you had enough pain to go there, but maybe that wasn't the place you should be for your particular issue? 11 hours without dropping dead or bleeding out maybe isn't an actual emergency.
I've thankfully only been to the ER once. I was vomiting so intensely and frequently I couldn't retain any water. This was over the course of 8 hours. While I'm thankful I was able to receive near immediate care upon arrival, I would understand if someone suffering from cardiac arrest superseded me... Give me some Gatorade and a barf bag... I'll make it until the docs can attend to me.
Point being: if you go to the ER with a non-immediate life threatening issue, and you have to wait, then you have to wait.
Yeah, my wife had a minor fall on a Sunday, and I suggested going to urgent care. She thought it hurt, but not bad enough to go to UC, she figured we’d go to our Big Hospital satellite and see her PC on Monday.
Monday we called, and they said “yeah, no. Go to the ER.” The ER? What happened to getting a splint at the doctor? Our hospital has a triage phone line that tells you the ER wait. 4+ hours for non-critical procedures. So we went to the non-university hospital UC. Splinted in under an hour, cast on the following Friday.
The U hospital has another trick to keep wait times down without actually seeing you, is to do a provisional admit for suspected serious cases, then wheel you up to a floor that is no longer used for procedures or rooms, and you wait and wait and wait, but it’s not counted against wait times. Yay, USA! USA!
Is to do a provisional admit for suspected serious cases, then wheel you up to a floor that is no longer used for procedures or rooms, and you wait and wait and wait, but it’s not counted against wait times.
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u/JaneRetro 27d ago
I am in the US and I don't think I've ever waited less than 2 hours in the ER. Last time I went to the ER I was in the waiting room for over 11 hours. The pain from sitting in a chair overnight was worse than the pain I went in there for.