In 1984 I waited about eight hours from arrival to surgery, and I’d guess that the time to a doctor was about six hours.
I was sideswiped while riding a motorscooter, at around two in the morning. I had a broken femur and assorted other injuries and was in pain, but I was reasonably stable. My parents arrived at the hospital, and when a nurse told them “Dr XX will be in soon to see your son”, my mother said, “No he won’t! Dr XX is a known drunk and a bad surgeon. Find another!” It took a few more hours for the teaching surgeon with Life Flight experience to get dressed and arrive. I still think that my mom saved my leg.
I just recently had to go to the ER due to an intractable migraine that had been going on for more than a week straight. Sure, they triaged me in no time, within 10 minutes of my arrival time to the ER. But I got to the ER around 9 p.m. and I did not see the doctor until after 4 a.m. 7 hours. It was only pure, utter desperation and hopelessness that kept me from leaving sooner.
I was hit by a taxi in Mexico while riding my bicycle. The extent of my injuries included a laceration to my elbow that had a galaxy of different bits of road dust in it. I was about to clean it myself when a friend informed me that “This is Mexico, you need a Tetanus shot immediately, even if you got one yesterday.”
So I went to the hospital and from front door to seeing the doctor took about 3 minutes. The hospital was at about 80% capacity, and there were plenty of other patients waiting. I paid in cash ($0.37), and that was it. Everyone was in process of being seen when I exited.
Back in the US, In a medium sized city north of Boston, MA, I waited overnight to be seen by a doctor for a severed C5 nerve in my back, which precluded me from raising my right arm, along with the sensation that someone was holding something red-hot against my back.
Obviously these are just two isolated incidents, but to me it always seems funny. A Tetanus booster in the US would have taken at least an hour.
I have only been to the ER while bleeding profusely and did not have to wait at all. I recommend anyone who needs to go to the ER and is not bleeding cut themselves if they do not want to wait.
My SO broke her foot bowling (yes, really) and we had just got a bed in the ER when the EMTs wheeled in a horrifically bloody guy and all hell broke loose.
The patient was a highway patrolman who had been hit by a drunk driver. He was standing behind a motorist’s car on the I-5 shoulder and the drunk swerved off the road, smashed the cop against the motorist’s bumper and amputatied his leg above the knee.
The drunk driver was a doctor. Who worked at that hospital. As their head of ER. He was also hurt in the wreck and was brought in by ambulance as well, screaming over and over that he’d killed the patrolman.
We were there for nine more hours and, of course, didn’t complain. The ER staff were understandingly very upset. The cop lived, as did the doc – I didn’t keep up with the story, but imagine the doctor was fired.
I was pushed out of the way and left on a gurney for probably about 7 hours. I was lined up for surgery, but something more important came in. It wasn’t a disaster, but I was injured and /cold/. I don’t know how long exactly, but I was injured in daylight, and it was after midnight I got into surgery.
I don’t remember how, but I think a member of my family got a blanket for me.
Oh yeah - I forgot to mention the time I had to take my daughter to an ER in southern Maine. We were tooling down I-95 south of Portland, when she started coughing. She’d been dealing with an asthma flareup so couighing wasn’t a big surprise.
And then she couldn’t move air at all. :eek::eek::eek:
I skidded to a stop on the shoulder while trying to punch 911 on my phone. The phone wouldn’t respond, naturally… and by the time it would, and I’d stopped, she was breathing again. Needless to say, though, I found the nearest ER and took her there.
By the time we got there she was feeling fine, but I wanted her seen anyway. I think it was maybe a half hour at most in the waiting area before we were taken back, though at one point right after we got there someone came out and mumbled something.
I thought he said “need to put ice on her” which really puzzled me as ice is not a typical treatment for an asthma attack. No, he said he wanted to put eyes on her, i.e. see her to make sure she wasn’t turning purple or dying or something else inconvenient.
I expect we hung about another hour before actually seeing a doctor. Our timing was good - it was a summer, in a beach area, and it was a Saturday afternoon - after most of the daytime “hey lookit me!” accidents had been dealt with and before the nighttime “hold my beer and lookit this!” stunts rolled in.
(She was fine, as it turned out - almost certainly had a laryngospasm, which was of course terrifying but once we knew what it was, I could talk her through the next coughing jag so it didn’t happen again).
The only time we needed the ER was when my wife was taken by ambulance. I got there 20 minutes later and she was already being treated. Of course, in addition to everything else, it was at 4 am, so the waiting room was empty.
I say “sort of” because I was seen in one sense immediately - as soon as I checked in they could see that I was conscious, lucid, mobile under my own steam and not bleeding out. Since there had been a traffic accident and ambulances were incoming, that immediately made me not a priority. And rightly so.
I was seen by a triage nurse?doctor? 30 minutes afterwards. I was treated maybe 3 hours later. I was bumped down the list a number of times. And rightly so. I’d broken a couple of bones in my foot. Inconvenient and somewhat painful, but not serious. An accident, but not an emergency. Triage working correctly.
Usually I wait a few minutes. Or not at all. Or maybe a quarter of an hour. That’s as an outpatient with an appointment. I was a regular for a while.
I took my husband to the ER with chest pain a couple of years ago. I dropped him at the door and went to park the car. He was in a wheelchair being taken to a room by the time I got inside. They do not eff around with chest pain.
I know you say “Not in the reception area,” but much of my story is there.
I worked at a hospital in my college years. I got hurt on the job-- got hit in the eye with a power washer, essentially at point-blank range. Walked down to the ER, told the triage nurse what happened, and she checked me in. I sat there, with my hand over my eye, for about an hour and a half. I went back to the desk and asked how long, they said the usual “As soon as possible.”
After more than two hours of waiting, I went back up to the desk and re-told my story-- and emphasized that I was still on the damn clock!-- so they had me do an eye test right there in the waiting area. (I should’ve said I was still clocked in two hours prior; apparently my uniform and badge wasn’t enough.) When they saw that I couldn’t see the eye chart two inches in front of my face, they rushed me back to a room. There I sat for the next hour, in and out of consciousness, before a doctor came in. So the total time between walking to the ER and being seen by a doctor: Likely just over 3 and a half hours before I was seen and diagnosed with a hyphema.
(I remember a friend/co-worker who had been present when I got hurt coming to visit me at about 4 in the morning, while I was still laying on a bed in the ER. I remember when I woke up, I said “I’m still getting paid!” And yes, I got paid for every minute of that ER ordeal and even moved into time-and-a-half at some point! Not bad for a Friday night in college. Had to drop of out school for the semester, but got a nice workman’s comp check every week and got to watch every March Madness game from my couch that spring.)
I’ve only been to the ER once in my adult life. A couple times when I was a young kid but I don’t really remember them.
On Mother’s Day two years ago, my mother asked me to pick up a loaf of bread on the way to her house. I tripped and fell in the grocery store parking lot, landing on my left arm and my face. I managed to drive myself home but quickly realized I was seriously hurt. My best friend came and drove me to the ER. He had plans to go to a concert that night so I made other arrangements for getting home if he had to leave me there. He had spent all night in the ER some months before so we were expecting to be there for a while.
Apparently, it being early in the afternoon on Mother’s Day, family fights had not yet broken out and there was no one else there. I was taken right back, CT scans of my head and arm done, given a pain pill and left to wait for the results. It wasn’t long before the doctor told me I had a fractured elbow and a pretty substantial hematoma on my forehead. And, oh yeah, don’t be scared when the blood from that starts moving down into your face (which it did and I looked hideous!). They put a temporary cast on my arm and I was home in less than two hours and my friend had plenty of time before the concert.
So I picked a good time to be hurt, and I still blame my mother.