I walked, well crawled, my way to the Emergency Department of Mission Memorial Hospital last week. I’m no stranger to the ER having needed its services on several occasions in the past. However, this experience was far different from my previous ones.
In the past I’ve gone to various emergency departments due to pancreatitis, appendicitis, a brain aneurysm, diabetic issues etc. and they have been so incredibly helpful and quick. I sometimes feel like being a diabetic for more than 50 years gets you put on the fast track to seeing a doctor.
But not last week.
Summing up my issue and explaining my symptoms as simply as possible, I told the registration nurse that, well, my knee hurt!
Not the most earth-shattering symptom in the world, but at the time it was important to me.
Not to lessen the intensity of my discomfort, my pain level was pretty darn high. I couldn’t walk on it at all - my wife had to push me around in a wheelchair - and I couldn’t sleep because of the constant sharp zinging of real pain. But in the long run, I was asking for help because, my knee hurt.
While she didn’t say anything to me about it, I got the impression from the triage nurse that I was being classified as a “he can wait” patient. in other words take a seat while people with more serious issues are dealt with first.
And that’s the way it should be, even though I was pouting about it at the time.
People have to understand that the emergency department is not a first come, first served industry. It doesn’t matter if you have been there waiting for three hours with a cut on your finger, the guy who just arrived with a suspected heart attack gets in ahead of you. That’s the point of triage.
Deal with it.
While the serious patients were lying in beds in the more critical side of the ER, I sat in the secondary waiting room with the other less serious patients hoping to see a doctor. I looked around the room, summing up the people also in need of help. A bloody man in bandages who was involved in a dog attack, a woman who’s child had an infected eye, other people already hooked up to IVs, people moaning, and a guy whose knee hurt.
Damn, all of these people were in worse condition than I was.
I had to keep reminding myself of those facts as I spent almost 10 hours in the ER. I arrived at about 6:20 in the evening and finally got home at 4 a.m. Talking with the staff there, they admitted that was a strangely long wait on that particular night, but there is nothing that they can do about it.
If you are expecting me to start bashing the emergency department, then think again. The staff at Mission Memorial Hospital were amazing. The nurses were kind and as helpful as they could be, the over-worked doctor was thorough and even the security guard was helping people find places to sit and assisting in any way he could. The staff are not to blame for the long line up - the government, Fraser Health, well that’s another story.
I have nothing but praise for the hospital staff. Can you imagine how hard it must be to work night after night surrounded by people asking for help and not having the resources to do just that. To have to tell a mother that her child will be seen, as soon as they can, knowing that might be another hour of two or four.
I sat there dealing with my pain for one night, they deal with everybody’s pain every day.
If you need to complain, take it up a notch to Fraser Health and the BC Government. We all know the medical system needs more money, we need more doctors and more nurses, but the question, as always, is how. I’m not pretending to offer any solutions to the health issues in BC. I just want to remind people that complaining to the nurses about wait times is like yelling at a barista about the price of coffee. They can’t control it, they can’t fix it, all they can do is the very best they can in a bad situation.
ER nurses and doctors are heroes. It’s easy to forget that when you are in pain.
By the way, for those wondering, I was diagnosed with gout and bursitis in my knee, so medication for me and no red meat for awhile (ever?).
Did I mention that my knee hurts?
- Kevin Mills is the editor of the Mission Record.
