Emergency rooms are not what they used to be. Gone are the days of lacerations, sprained ankles, appys, replaced by people with complex medical histories who are now septic, have had MI's, strokes, etc. In other words our patients are train wrecks.
Add to that the frequent flyer nutbags, drunks, overdoses. Throw in an explosion of the mentally ill, especially adolescents, you have a picture of the modern day ER. In other words everybody gets an IV, meds, 25 lab tests, a UA, at least one xray and probably a CT. You may be the lucky winner of the numerous MRI's and CT heart angios we are now doing out of the ER.
You can expect to wait most days a minimum of 2 hours. You can expect at least one of the numerous mental patient who have been sitting in ER for 1-4 days to get out of control, possibly needing to be restrained, during your stay in the ER.
Woder where your nurse is? She or he are spending most of their time charting about things that have nothing to do with why you are here, but but are required anyway.
Yes your ER has become a mecca for the chronically ill, the elderly, the mentally ill and hood rats from the neighborhood. You can expect to meet them in the crowded waiting room. Throw in a few smelly homeless people, jittery drug seekers, moaning drama queens and you get the idea. You will hear languages from all over the world. It's a United Nations out there. We take everybody. We can't turn anyone away.
