Poor Martha Stewart. Her dog jumped up and gave her a fat lip and a cut. What did Martha do? She called the police to give her a ride to the hospital. Apparently she couldn't drive herself or get someone to drive her. You know, I don't think the police would drive me to the hospital if I called them.
Another call Martha made was to someone else so they could have a plastic surgeon come to repair her laceration. I'm sure Martha went straight back, was seen right away....do not pass go, do not collect $200. I don't think I would have got back that fast and an ordinary ER doc would have stitched me up.
This is the kind of stuff that drives ER nurses nuts. Some people are given VIP treatment. We will get a call periodically about so and so is coming in and they just want to LET US KNOW. Or someone will call one of our docs and tell them some "VIP" is coming and we are supposed to take them DIRECTLY BACK TO A ROOM.
Our thought: Every body should be treated the same. We don't like treating certain people special. ER is one of those places where everybody should be equal.
4 comments:
I have used my own ER only once as a patient in my entire life, and they just brought me back right away even though my problem was relatively minor (a small fracture).
I certainly wasn't complaining. I suppose that makes me a "VIP", but I figure with all the 70,000,000 hours that I put into that place...the one time I come in, I could come back right away and sit in a fast track room ahead of a couple of the other people with an ESI-4 (cough, sore throat crew).
Why not the same argument for big donors to the hospital and such? I think celebrities can sit and wait, but people who gave a million bucks to the hospital? Not like 'don't treat the cardiac arrest and take the VIP instead', but you know what I mean...VIP treatment within reason.
Nurse K has a good point. When my daughter fell off a horse and got a concussion (yes, she was wearing a helmet) and when my husband got appendicitis, I was extremely grateful for the prompt treatment my fellow ER staff gave them. It was wonderful. So, I guess I encourage VIP treatment for ER staff and their immediate families.
However, when it comes to gratuitously kissing the behind of the local Congressman's mother in law or the professional football player's brother, it is pretty annoying.
My personal policy is no VIP treatment for anyone period. The only exception in my book is hospital staff for a work-related injury. Got a needlestick?, I will squeeze you in. Anybody else, celebrity, hospital administrator, child of co-worker etc. should wait their turn. I've also found that when you try and give someone VIP treatment, it can back-fire. Everyone's trying to do it faster and go outside of normal procedures and then the ball gets dropped somewhere and it doesn't work. Reminds me of one of our doctors who tried to get a private ambulance to come code2 and then take their spouse to our ER after an accident (we were not the closest and are not a trauma center). Well, the patient had a pelvic fracture so how good an idea was that?
Good point NurseK
Neat Blog !
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