from feast to famine

It was the day from hell. We knew it was coming. The last couple of days had been average. It's a holiday weekend. It was not a matter of if we would be pounded, but when. And of course who is in charge of this chaos? You guessed it.

When I took over charge things looked dire. They got worse. Everybody was running their ass off. The ER was full, the waiting room was full. The wait was 3 hours. The natives were restless.

At one point an irate patient came up to the window. They had taken an ambulance in for a very minor problem. They were triaged and put in the lobby. Two hours later they still hadn't gone back. They yelled at me and left. Moral of the story: If you take an ambulance in for a minor problem, you're going to the lobby like everyone else.

Here's the deal - the chaos went on for about 9 hours, to the point where we called in an extra doc and nurse. Two hours later the lobby was empty and so was the ER. I actually got to leave early.

That is ER in a nutshell. You go from bursting at the seams to empty all in the course of a 12 hour shift