What state is the health service in where you are?

Trollheart · 03-29-2014, 06:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burning Down

WTF, that is insane. I've never heard of that happening here - not to say that it doesn't, but I've always been put through pretty quickly. I know they triage people in the ER of course, but that's insane. A heart attack patient would be taken in right away here. Hell, even I saw a doctor and got an X-ray within three hours when I went to the hospital with a broken finger. I know that there is a huge difference in wait times in urban vs. rural hospitals though, especially here. Some rural hospitals don't even have ERs.

The main problem with waiting times here is that hospitals are often clogged up with hypochondriacs who come in convinced they have the fucking bubonic plague because they sneezed once. More outpatient clinics and urgent care centres are opening up here to help alleviate any congestion.

It looks like Canada is in a league of its own then. See Engine's comment above. As far as your second paragraph goes, this is how it works in Ireland (well, in Dublin anyway): if you come in uner your own power (car, taxi, bus whatever) you go to the waiting room and you then have to wait many hours before being called into the actual A&E where a doctor will see you, I think straight away. If you come in in the ambulance you go directly in to A&E on a stretcher, are quickly transferred to a steel trolley

where you will remain until either the doctor sees you and sends you home or you get a proper bed.

It's pretty much the same wait then really, though they give priority to the emergency patients, which is why you'll see people out in the WR saying "I've been here for ten hours" and the reply from the harrassed nurse will be "Sorry but we have to see the ambulance patients first." It sucks but that's how it goes.

But it's mad to think that every time --- every time --- in the last two months that we went into the hospital we were waiting a minimum of seven to ten hours before any doctor saw my sister, and anything up to 24 before she got a bed, if one was deemed necessary (on some occasions she was just told she could go home, cue another 5/10 hours wait for an ambulance...)