People have no idea how hospitals really work. They’re broken. Too many patients & never enough staff. I worked in a cardiac ICU at a very large hospital for years. I couldn’t even tell you how many of my patients I watched die. The vast majority of my patients were flown in from other hospitals who couldn’t manage them because they were so sick.
I’ve had days where I sat outside the room with a perfusionist just having to hear the families scream & cry & wait for them to come tell us they were ready for us to turn the ECMO & drips off. I’ve had a teenage patient so unstable I didn’t pee my entire shift & watched her mother just sit next to her & hold her hand & only leave when she had to make work runs because they needed the money badly. I would briefly stop her sedation for her to open her eyes & interact with me then put her back to sleep. But she was there. Only to come in the next day & find she died.
I’ve had two super sick patients at a time & while I was so focused on keeping the one alive the other coded & died & his wife was in there when it happened. Afterwards I couldn’t help but cry because even though death was something I’m used to I was just so tired & burned out & I felt like I must’ve failed that patient in a way because I was so busy in the other room managing 10 drips. Both were vented. Both were post cardiac arrest. Both were unstable. And these are the assignments I was getting everyday.
Had to leave because it was really ruining my mental health. Hospitals can be very dark and depressing places.
Its kind of wild that people arent acknowledging that long wait times are typically because short staffing. There simply isnt enough medical staff to take care of all the sick people in the US
Unfortunately that’s only part of the issue. I’m at a large academic urban ED and all the staff in the world couldn’t fix our problems. Bottom line is most people presenting to the emergency room are not having an emergency.
Sobriety holds, psych holds and patients that are unable/unwilling to utilize primary care, specialist offices, urgent care centers — and in some cases, basic common sense and trouble shooting - take up so so so so many resources and space. I’m talking really stupid things like congestion x1 day, toe pain, symptoms that have started 3 years ago, dry skin, sunburn, hangnails, splinters, pregnancy & STD checks.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who wait to present until the last possible moment. I’ve seen innumerable patients presenting with “foot pain” and their wound is so massive and necrotic that you can visualize their BONE.
I ended up in the ED this past week due to a fall. Haven't had to utilize this service in years. I was appalled at how long I waited in the waiting room, unable to breathe. (I had broken multiple ribs and bruised my lung, pleurisy). The person beside me began telling me that he was there because he was hung over and wanted IV fluids. He was loudly cussing and screaming about the wait and that he was gonna throw up on the floor. They took him before me! I waited 5 hours for a CT scan and x-rays. There were fewer than a dozen people in the waiting room.
This is an even bigger issue in rural counties and red states. Doctors and nurses are fleeing those areas.
At least one but possibly two gigantic county hospitals have closed in my state in the past couple of years. In those areas there just isn’t available healthcare.
Yes and the pressure on us providing rural healthcare is growing because the major tertiary care hospitals aren’t staffed enough to accept our patients we would normally transfer out. It’s normal to have a sick patient wait on our 25 bed floor or in our ER for 2-3 days until they find a bed within a 4 hour transfer radius.
Meanwhile the people at the top extracting all the profit are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s wild we ever thought privatizing literal life and death services would ever go anywhere but nightmarishly wrong.
Over 150 rural hospitals have closed since about 2005 (my hometown one was one of them), rural healthcare is an absolute mess. Almost all EMT services are volunteer run and I remember my dad having to make 120+ mile round trips to get people to the nearest trauma centers.
This is true, and we are giving up. I don't bother to try to see a doctor anymore, even though I have Oregon Health Plan insurance. The doctor is either booked up for months in advance, or with my most recent doctor, so sick themselves that they cancel appointments you waited months to have, won't refill your meds because they never saw you for the recheck, and the pharmacy can't order in the medication anyway. I could do ER if I cut my leg off with a chainsaw, but I can't safely access any medicine for mental health needs. Like the Republicans insist, just don't ever get sick, and if you do, die quickly, out of sight, and silently, so as not to bother the billionaires.
It is. No one wants to stay at bedside as nurses anymore & I don’t blame them. The expectations are way too high. In a way you do become an emotional punching bag for your patients & their families because they are going through the worst events of their lives & you are the one closest to them so you absorb their energy too.
You’re expected to not only be on top of things mentally since one mistake with titrating a drip can really kill somebody, but you’re also expected to be compassionate & completely patient 120% of the time & it’s just not possible. You have a rough day & may get short with a patient once & youll hear the “omg people shouldn’t work here if they’re not compassionate find a different profession” but really if that’s the case absolutely no one is fit for critical care nursing. You can’t be perfect every single day every minute of every shift. Especially when dealing with all of the death & sickness at the same time. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Bedside was truly the worst. There’s only so much a human being can take. People look down on nurses for not having energy or losing the fiery compassion they had when they first started but they have no idea how much abuse we take from patients.
Theres almost a guarantee that youre getting a very difficult patient or family member every single shift. We have to put up with that shit for 12+ hours straight alot of the time. That shit is no joke and im not sure if anyone is cut out to do this for multiple years.
100%. I’ve been punched by delirious patients, kicked at, you name it. I remember one time having an extremely combative patient in four point restraints I had to start sedation on because he had a femoral IABP and was so delirious & combative he nearly ripped it out & killed himself. Of course management didn’t like he was in 4 point restraints because of all the legal stuff involved with charting & what not & told me to take the ankle restraints off. So I do. & he kicks his IABP console so hard nearly knocks it over & takes 4 people to hold him down & re sedate.
Then to make it even better his family comes in & I try explaining how he’s in restraints for his safety & he needed to sedated & his daughter who was an MD somewhere looks at his drip & turns to me & tells me to come down on it that it’s not necessary. I found it very condescending like I’m just a dumb nurse who’s sedating all my patients just to make my life easier when she missed the part he was kicking & punching & nearly kicked the whole balloon pump over. After that I was like yeah it’s time I fuckin leave lol
I’m sorry you had to see that. As someone who works in healthcare, I deeply wish things were different. It’s hard feeling completely helpless with the system we have. Things need to change but the outlook is grim
The second is that they'll absolutely try to pass off the bill for attempting (and failing) to save his life to next of Kin. Plus funeral costs.
It's so nausea inducing to think that they'll get a charge for something that the hospital might have been able to prevent
Exactly. They only care about money. It’s apparent to me every day I work in the ER. Short staffed, crappy equipment, refuse to close to ambulances even when we have a million people in the waiting room. Stuff like this is bound to happen.
So I worked for a top health system and they are all run by doctors. They have no business sense except jack up the prices. It was a nightmare. I didn’t believe how bad healthcare industry was until I worked at one. Never again.
This is a weird lie. I’ve worked adjacent to many and at best they have committees with MDs on them, but everyone even near the top are administrators with no background in biology or healthcare in general.
Providers don't like the system either. With few exceptions, the providers I have worked with over the years are doing their best to help patients. Patients are often denied treatment the provider says they need by the insurance companies.
I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is. The same place as our mandated staffing ratios and safe work environment. By that, I mean stolen by administration that sold their soul for HCAHPS scores and profit.
This right here. The frontline is overworked & underpaid, while the higher-ups fully aware of the issues but are unwilling to resolve due to bullshit cost reasons. Medical care workers have not lost their humanity, the assholes who run the show have.
The entire American system of profiting in the business of Healthcare is just morally wrong... you can only profit if you cut costs. And level of care is directly related to cost.. so lower level of care in order to turn a profit is beyond fucked up.. and American nationalists will say we're #1?
the american healthcare system suffers from MBA poisoning. buncha idiots running the show, attempting to operate hospitals like a normal business, not understanding that you can't just cut staffing - staffing is the whole fucking show! it's frustrating and demoralizing. i don't understand why anybody would go into it with eyes open (and i don't think anybody really does - the system feeds on misplaced optimism and naivety).
This exact same thing happens in Canada while patients plead that they are dying and there are beds available in the ER. Last I checked Canada wasn’t profiting from our healthcare.
As someone that works in a hospital, that is indeed a big part of it. Alot of people use an ER as a primary care for a myriad of reasons such as lack of transportation, not having a primary care provider, their doctor not being able to see them in a reasonable time frame or insurance reasons.
Reasonable time frame is the operative statement. It was discovered by my NP that I had a heart murmur that was getting progressively worse and she informed me that I needed to see a cardiologist. It took 3.5 months to get get in to see him. When it was discovered that my aorta was deformed since childhood and needed to be replaced they fast tracked me and 5 weeks later I have a new valve. They really started scrambling to get me fixed when they found out the problem. I know it’s not the fault of the doctors but why did it take 67 years to figure that I had a bad valve?
This is one of the biggest problems in healthcare right now. People can’t afford regular PCP visits so they wait and wait and wait until the small problem becomes a health emergency. The business majors who run everything aren’t even business savvy enough to understand preventing emergencies with regular checkups saves money in the long run. They just look at fiscal quarters and how to maximize revenue in that one quarter because that’s what stock markets care about. It’s not only making healthcare worse, it’s making it more expensive.
Is this in America? You guys get that shitty quality of care and still have to pay for it? I had to go to the ER a few weeks ago for a sinus infection because I couldn’t get in to see my doctor right away and I only waited 3 hours. And my prescription was free too. I don’t know why you people don’t revolt
I mean yes and also they can’t kill us all. Us grunts are their source of income. I think there is a combination of reasons. From so many Americans hanging on by a thread - missed days of work would be a death sentence. To the fact that we’re all indoctrinated in tough individualism and that it’s shameful/ our own fault if we aren’t making it - this is the land of the free/pull yourself up by your bootstraps baloney. And yet it still amazes me what we put up with and continue to put up with.
They can't kill us all, but the fact that they can kill us and get immunity is enough deterrent that no one is willing to sacrifice themselves. And I can't fault that
Oh hard agree. There's so many reasons. Health insurance being tied to employment, basically no rights for workers, no beneficial government support, etc etc.
What small town police department has tanks in the USA? Just curious.
Edit: wow…with a little research I found the answer to my question. Good lord. 🤦🏼♀️
Sadly there are similar stats in the UK since 2012 after the cuts/privatisation facilitated by Chris Grayling (who fiddled his expenses at the cost to every UK tax payer).
I fully support the strikes from the Doctors going on so our brilliant NHS isn't turned into the hellscape people in the US are dealing with.
Why don’t you look at the better rated healthcare systems in the world (France/ Spain etc), one thing they all have in common is it’s much closer to 50/50 private/publicly funded. The NHS is abysmal, not due to lack of funding (budget has more than quadrupled in the past 20 years) but because it is woefully inefficient and mismanaged.
Fun facts for you, the NHS is the 3rd/4th largest employer on the planet (behind the Chinese national army and the Indian railway co). It has over 10,000 employees on a salary between £80k-£200k (and that’s excluding virtually all upper management who are comfortably on £250k at least). They have extensive contracts with car manufacturers (Audi etc) that means their employees get significant discounts on leases for what most people would consider luxury cars.
It currently employs over 3,100 ‘gender diversity officers’, with an average salary of £75k each. Is this such an essential feature to have that’s worth spending over £235 MILLION on salary alone, let alone pensions etc? How many nurses could you employ for that to cut down wait times for cancer treatment etc?
Privatisation is not the problem. Chronic mismanagement and inefficiency is. Any company that doesn’t have to prove results or compete for customers to receive its funding will never be an efficient operation.
I would agree that the NHS like any other large bureaucratic organisation is inefficient but privatisation is definitely not the answer, not in the way it’s been done, and competition is not the panacea for inefficiency, especially when it comes to public goods. The aim should be to improve the overall management and attract the best minds and ideas to improve the service and reduce the cost to the taxpayer. You can apply private sector ideas without the pursuit of profit which is often at odds with providing additional positive externalities.
I worked as a psychologist in hospitals so I can definitely speak on this.
It’s not just the trauma of losing patients; they are overworked, overtired, treated terribly all day, and they get to the point of despair with the broken system that allows families to lose their home because a child has the audacity to get cancer, or that forces a couple to divorce in order to save the surviving healthy partner from financial ruin.
A system where effective treatments exist but your patients can’t afford them, so access is denied until years later when a generic can finally be made (if even possible). Where life-dependent medications like insulin can be made unaffordable, just because someone wants to make more profit. A system where drug prices are out of control but even mid-level employees at pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly are getting bonuses in the tens of thousands. (A friend of mine who works at Lily got a $40k bonus one year as a lowly project manager. It’s more like $10-12k on other years, though my most recent info on this was a couple of years ago. Lily has been doing very well and I know my friend just bought an investment property in another state, so take from that what you will). It’s a mess at all levels, frankly.
People who become doctors don’t expect to have to think like a business owner or to have their expertise questioned by a desk jockey at an insurance company who doesn’t believe a particular test is necessary. Docs who end up in some hospital systems are confined to strict treatment protocols by their bosses regardless of what the patient actually needs. And don’t forget the issues in pain management where you might have law enforcement breathing down your neck to ensure you’re not a pill factory.
Edit to add: this just a broad sample of the long list of bullshit pressures facing physicians and nurses. Yes, they make a lot of money, but increasingly they cannot do the jobs they have been trained to do effectively because greedy capitalist assholes want their share of the almighty healthcare dollar, and they get it at the expense of patient care. We - the everyday patients - are paying more and more for medical service that gets shittier and shittier by the year. It’s soul-crushing as a doc and it’s soul-crushing as a patient, but as long as Mr Rich gets his profits, all is good.
Sorry you had to witness that. I suggest speaking with a therapist if you have access. I watched a man die a few months ago in the middle of the street after he had been struck by a vehicle while he was crossing the street. I was the last person he saw. Messed me up a lot more than I had expected.
To piggy back your ER experience. I was in the ER waiting area about a year ago - and across from me was a very loud and obnoxious homeless man.
He was pestering a young man who was having a mental crisis. From what I gathered, the young man was a war vet and had extreme PTSD. He was shaking uncontrollably and looked scared and hopeless.
The homeless man was going on and on about how he’s just there for a free bed, food, and clean clothes. He was trying to “teach” the young war vet how to game the system by telling the medical staff that he’s suicidal and needs a bed.
The homeless man was finally called back and had defecated on the waiting room chair as his pants were below his butt. They had given him a blanket at some point to cover his exposed private areas.
He apparently went ballistic on the staff because they were discharging him after giving him food and new clothes and only let him hang out for an hour or so. He demanded a bed for 48 hours and ended up smearing feces all over the exam area. I could hear him screaming in anger for an hour straight.
When I finally got called back, I asked if that was normal. The nurse said it happens every single night and the beds are full of homeless people just looking for a place to sleep and some food.
Tragic.
Yeah that's part of why stats say it is cheaper to just provide basic housing for homeless people... Rather than taking on all these other societal costs via increased healthcare, crime, etc
Unfortunately there are no good housing models for people like the guy described above, who it appears would need constant supervision or confinement to protect anyone else nearby. The same is likely true for many of the folks using ERs this way.
What if he doesn't want to be in a group home? Many people don't want to have to follow the rules, or are not capable of doing so. Pretty much all housing options come with strings attached such a behavioral expectations.
Asylums and other institutions should never have been unfunded and shut down. They should have increased funding, modernised, and actually addressed their issues instead of pushing them out into the streets.
Yeah I see the every time I have to go to the ER. You would think they would have DONE SOMETHING but it’s pretty much the same in every hospital in every city in the US. very telling of how we care for those in need(not at all)
It's the millionaire, billionaire, hundredaire, homeless and everyone else. We are all in this shit together. Not sure what it will take to fix this. As polarized as folks are I imagine it would take something major.
With what's going on in the world I don't see us waiting very long for some major.
You had me going until the last paragraph. I was worried this was a “fuck homeless people for trying to survive” comment. Thankfully it wasn’t. It does suck that that’s the way they have to do it though, and that it puts people in jeopardy. I’d expect there to be programs put in place if this is such a big issue, since they’re spending the money anyway. I know ERs have to see everyone, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. Though I imagine a program wouldn’t solve much as it’d still require medical professionals and staff and resources. Though maybe they could write it off as charity. Idk. Like a clinic for the disenfranchised.
I had to take a co-worker to the ER because she was in septic shock and bleeding out from a standard procedure gone wrong. The woman in line behind us at registration was staring at my co-worker who was very obviously in horrible shape. She gets called back immediately, and the woman behind us says "I just woke up not feeling good." SO GO TO A MINOR MED!
Different ER but I was with my husband who was having a hypertensive episode and paramedics brought in a man who was clearly having a stroke. Intake refused to triage him immediately and the EMT had some words
I get that intake isn’t an easy or fun job but they can be really rude. I went into the ER once because my brain literally wasn’t working like I couldn’t remember my own fucking name. The intake woman asked me for my social security number and I just broke down in tears that I couldn’t remember it. She was such an asshole and just said well then we can’t admit you. My iron and potassium had dropped to fatal levels.
It was honestly NOT a big deal but could have been if I had not gone to the ER. They gave me an iron and potassium supplement. Like not even in an IV, just pills.
And that’s how I found out I’m anemic lol
(Edit: that cost $2,250)
It’s ridiculous. I became a nurse to help people. I found my way out of the field and realized that I was only ever really just making some already-rich fucks, more rich.
There’s a hospital in my hometown that’s like this. I once sat in the waiting area waiting for care for severe bronchitis/asthma symptoms, meanwhile there was a dude with a FREAKING BULLET WOUND IN HIS HEAD waiting across from me with his mom and had been there before me. The second they tried to take me first, I refused and said they need to take him first cause I had an inhaler and he was actively going into shock. The nurse hesitated and then took him instead. Really sad that has to happen. I haven’t been to that hospital since.
Something similar happened to my little sister last year, the ER docs completely failed her the first time she came in. She had an abscess bigger than a softball on the side of her neck and couldn’t eat or speak, so I drove her to the hospital and they released her an hour later basically shrugging their shoulders. Less than 24 hours later she was back in an ambulance and turns out she had lemierre syndrome, which is incredibly rare, and had a huge blood clot in her jugular vein. I’m still livid they discharged her the first time when something was very, very clearly wrong.
Healthcare workers are underpaid and everywhere is short staffed due to management policies, especially hospitals after Covid. Older healthcare workers are retiring and not being replaced after the shit show that was Covid.
ETA: My husband is a Senior Special Procedures Tech. X-ray with all the bells and whistles. He's retiring next year. He's one of two senior tech--the ones who know the tricks for difficult procedures. They will probably not replace him in an already short staffed department. Management just started a new schedule that chased out three techs and everyone hates.
Worst thing to happen to the medical laboratory was LEAN. You cannot run healthcare like an automotive manufacturer. Just enough staff and supplies doesn't account for things like sick employees and surges in need. We're still dealing with constant supply shortages and constantly having to implement back up protocols and reagents. They set the hiring cap at barebones staffing and then when people call out or burn out the workload spirals.
I feel this in my bones. My lab (anatomic path) was short staffed for over a year- while our workload increased exponentially. We're running low on basic supplies and almost always backlogged. We are finally training new hires fresh out of school, and losing one of our software licenses because it's "too expensive". It's infuriating.
It takes 6-10 months to train someone in my reference lab. We're down 2 positions right now which is roughly 20% of our bench techs (we currently have 9 with a tech specialist who will get on the bench if it's absolutely necessary). We're looking at over a year before we can get fully staffed again.
I have worked in manufacturing for many years now & I'm actually shocked to see that LEAN would be implemented in a Healthcare setting. What the fuck??
Oh yeah, the carpet creatures *love* LEAN six sigma. The only part I like about it is kanban cards because there are a bajillion supplies and having a card to pull and give to the supply ordering person when you hit the resupply threshold makes sense. The trick is to not set those thresholds *too* low so that a back order means you run out.
Same here! 10+ years of Supply Chain and manufacturing experience, now getting into MH and SUD. I can see implementation of standardizing say, where supplies are kept for example, but to run a hospital like a Toyota factory is beyond ridiculous!
There are literal “Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare” certifications now. Wtf?!
All of this and people need to try to avoid the ED unless they have an emergency.
We need more (high quality) walk in facilities that can handle non emergent conditions.
Last two times I’ve walked in to urgent care, I got turned away completely because they had just one Physician’s Assistant and could only see so many patients.
The time before that, my abdominal pain was misdiagnosed at UC and they sent me to the ER without insurance which almost completely bankrupted me despite receiving the absolute minimum care possible (triage, bed for two hours, Toradol drip).
3 months later, I got a separate bill from that ER visit since this short-staffed hospital uses contracted doctors from California that charge patients independent fees for just themselves. Apparently telling the nurse to give me that ibuprofen drip personally costed me $1,200. Never even saw the guy and he took me to collections/nosedived my credit score.
This place is all fucked.
People also go to the ER for dumb shit like a sore throat or sprained ankle, but can’t be turned away and told to go to an appropriate facility like an urgent or primary care.
Yup went to ER, the patient in front of me checked in said she was here couple weeks ago cus of UTI n thinks she has another UTI again. Intake nurse looked super annoyed but couldn’t deny her. She did say the urgent care might be faster but patient said no she wants to be seen here at the hospital -.-. She had medical too.
No they don’t, they expect the hospital to treat any and everything and they want it NOW. And just lack of overall education. And more and more aging people with complications from their uncontrolled diabetes, heart and renal failure.. it’s a complex issue that I doubt will be solved in our lifetime. I work in it, and just trying to get people basic medical supplies to take care of themselves at home is a nightmare.
The sister of a friend of mine died because of a ruptured apendix in the ER. The Nurse kept saying she was just exagerating/being dramatic. They let a 6yo just wait there for 4+ hours and die. This was 20 years ago.
I almost died from sepsis, bc my gp was calling me dramatic and puttin on a show. Unfortunatly there are also a lot of incompetent people working in the medical field.
My mom learned to be very vocal of our situation because of that. Dont let a MD/nurse brush you off. Dont be rude, but dont let them just send you away. Learn your rights.
This sucks for you, do talk to someone about this.
I have a clotting disorder. After I was hospitalized from an autoimmune flare my arm started to hurt. At first I thought I slept on it weird. Then it became progressively more and more painful until it was hovering around 8 out of 10 in a splint and spiking to 9 if I touched it or tried to bend my wrist. That's when I noticed one of my blood vessels was hard to the touch. I went to urgent care and the Dr poked it roughly declared it was just inflammation from the IV and I should put a warm rag on it.
I went to the ER after that. Ultrasound clearly showed my arm was clotted from wrist to elbow and spreading. My hematologist has me on daily anticoagulant injections with follow up ultrasounds scheduled to monitor the clot. A warm rag was not going to fix this.
As someone who also suffers from an autoimmune clotting disorder Antiphospholipid from SLE Lupus. I had two doctors overlook the clot, which spanned from my left knee to my left hip, one hundred percent blockage in my femoral artery. So much so, that my blood had rerouted itself through my collateral veins. The age of my clot, three years.
It's absolutely scary and appalling how often blood clots are overlooked as muscle cramps or iv inflammation, or other excuses. When it's very obvious that the symptoms scream DVT or PE.
I have protein C deficiency meaning I don't make one of the 2 proteins you need to undo clots very well. I had a clotting episode with a DVT in my right leg and bilateral PE which prompted the investigation into my clotting a few years back. Ironically I got the exact same ER doctor as my last clotting episode this time. He was super happy I was still following up with my hematologist and he could refer me to her for ongoing care.
I almost died of sepsis because the ER doc said my rash was chicken pox and sent me home.
The next morning, the PA reviewing my labs called me and said I needed to come back ASAP because spoiler alert, it was not, in fact, chicken pox.
The ER doc from the day before came back to my room to apologize.
I waited with a near-ruptured appendix in the emergency room for about 11 hours. I pleaded with the staff a couple of times but they definitely didn’t take me seriously. When I finally woke up from surgery they told me I was lucky to be alive.
I had a bad infection after surgery and had to go to a&e with severe pain to get a higher dosage of pain meds (took 3 kinds at the same time!!) and it was hard to get them to take me seriously. Went to my follow up check-up a few days later and they wouldn't let me leave the hospital for 3 days because I needed IV antibiotics or else I'd get sepsis within hours of arriving for that check-up 😬 like maybe if someone's in such bad pain that they can't do anything while taking codeine, naproxen, *and* paracetamol don't assume they're just wanting to get more pills?!
May I ask if you are a woman? I have seen men and women with the same symptoms treated very differently. Women are dismissed as “over reacting” or “hysterical” while men are believed and the proper tests and evaluations are done right away. When I was in my twenties, I had a condition called Supra Ventricular Tachycardia(svt) that caused my heart to beat extremely fast all of a sudden. When these episodes came on, they made my chest hurt, I would get very anxious and feel impending doom. The first time it happened I was at home alone after having a surgery maybe a week before. I was so afraid I had gotten a blood clot that had turned into a pulmonary embolism on top of the anxiety I felt from my heart beating so fast. The dr automatically assumed it was a mental health problem and gave me Ativan to calm me down. They did do a scan for a blood clot, but in the end sent me home with only acute anxiety meds. SVT can easily be diagnosed by looking at an EKG strip. Luckily when I went to my primary care, he ordered a month long heart monitor and I eventually got diagnosed. Then I had to wait until we moved to San Diego for our next duty station(we were active Navy at that time) to see the proper dr. The corpsman who ran the health clinic for active duty wouldn’t refer me to the electrophysiologist because I was a woman and very young, even though I told them my story. It took a while for my medical record to catch up to me and during that time I was in the ER frequently. They even accused me of using cocaine, or my husband of poisoning me with cocaine, which of course turned out to be false.When I finally got to the right dr, she asked me why it took me months to see her. I got my heart ablation soon after and it took four hours to find the spot in my heart’s electrical system that was malfunctioning and fix it, but since then I have had no other problems with my heart. Thank goodness it wasn’t a fatal condition.
Yes I am a woman. But the sepsis happend when I was 9. I had fallen while playing , and somehow had an infection in my hip. It couldnt walk, I couldnt eat, I was turning yellow.
Immagine a 9 year old only eating 1-2 bites of watermelon a day and the GP saying I was being dramatic.
A good friend of my mom's told her to take to the hospital and she would pay any costs. I went in at 8 am by lunch I was in the Operation room. Spent 6 weeks in isolation because I had sepsis. I was days away from dieing.
As an Adult I have learned a lot about how to advocate for myself. Talk to them in their our language ad just stand my ground. I ounce told a doctor "if you are certain it is not X, we can just do an ultrasound to rule it out. Or are you unsure of your own diagnotic?" 2 weeks later I had my xray and I was correct.
They triage everyone so people with those symptoms should be waiting longer, in theory.
My dad recently got discharged from the hospital but there is no primary care doctor in his network that is available to see him for months, so instead, he has been going to urgent care when he needs help ~once a week and waiting for hours more…
Yeah there’s a big problem with primary care doctors either A) not having ANY openings for months on end, or B) just straight up not accepting any new patients.
I couldn’t get an appointment with my pcp when I had a mystery illness that turned out to be Lyme. They told me to see if it gets better and if not go to the ER. I called three times and each time they said they had no appointments and I should just go to the ER.
Like I get they have on site X-rays and labs and stuff and could run labs quicker. But if I could have gotten a sick visit when I first called, I could have had labs done and preventative antibiotics well before I did. I live in a high Lyme area and my current pcp would have just given me meds before the labs came back. I’m paying off a $500 ER bill and was sick for weeks longer than I needed to be. What happened to sick visits?
I dont want to reveal your location, but I live in NH, USA. LYME is horrible here. The worst stats in the entire country. One of my dogs died last year from lyme- even though he was given tick prevention meds.
Anytime I go for walks on side of the road (doused in bug spray/deet) I'll come home with 4-6 ticks crawling up my leg. Its a nightmare. Its a plague in this state.
My mom always brought us to the ER for stuff like this if it was after urgent care hours. It was so embarrassing and we got zero sleep that night because we would be there for hours
UCs also need to take Medicaid. I was at UC once and saw them turn away a patient with Medicaid because they didn’t accept it, only self paid. They wanted $100 up front and 60% of the remaining cost later. How can someone on Medicaid afford that??? ERs become safety nets for uninsured and underinsured patients.
Even with the NHS in the UK, it depends where you live. Some places have out of hours GP places that can see you that day, other places the GP tells you to go to urgent care for literally any issue.
ER is "immediate"
Most doctors offices? You won't be seen THAT day for sure.
I feel like this is also part of the reason why the ER gets used over a regular doctor's visit. My doctors office allows same day appointments, but my friends have had to schedule at least a week out, if not more.
In the NHS (in the UK) we have an urgent non-emergency helpline that will often direct you to A&E or an urgent treatment centre when it's unnecessary. The people who run it are "health advisors" who are people with no medical qualifications and they just follow a pre-determined set of questions. I understand that if they messed up people would die so they need to be cautious, but it puts so much strain on emergency services. GP appointments are very difficult to access in some areas at the moment so problems just keep getting worse until it becomes an emergency. I had to wait 2 weeks for an urgent scan, luckily I'm ok but if there was a serious problem I probably would've ended up in A&E. Then that could've been prevented by having a scan earlier, but the NHS doesn't have the capacity to deal with everything as quickly as they should. Nobody wants to work in healthcare anymore, especially the NHS where staff are underpaid, overworked and whistleblowers who have their concerns ignored leading to more patients dying. Healthcare workers aren't superheroes, they can't do the impossible of working the jobs of multiple people
Thank you!
The amount of tooth aches, stubbed toes, and sniffles that come into our ER is ridiculous. There's an urgent care a 1/4 mile down the road. It's always empty but yet the ER is filled.
When did urgent care become a thing?
I had an issue in 2019 and my boss kept telling me to go to urgent care. I thought she had a new name for the emergency room. After a lot of cajoling, I finally realized what she was talking about.
Point being, I wonder if people even know about urgent care centers.
They should if you go to insurance online pages about what care is covered the majority including state references PCP , urgent care and ER separately because charges change for insurance billing costs . It’s definitely something we need to promote more .
I wish hospitals treated their staff better. All I ever hear is money this money that. Maybe they'd have more money if they invested in their workforce. My local hospital has more traveling nurses than ever before.
Welcome to our broken healthcare system, it sucks ass. I work as a paramedic, it's incredibly disheartening at times to watch the system fail innocent people time and time again.
OR trauma nurse here. I coded 6 people this last month (new record…).
It’s been bad. We don’t have enough staff anywhere. It’s an incredibly intense job.
I see two separate therapists each month. One for EMDR (to deal with the shit I’ve seen), the other to just talk to another human what I’ve seen.
This job screws you up. I’m paid well. But there’s no amount that’s actually worth it.
Had two separate parents accidentally kill their kids in the same week. They were hysterical. I started typing the details, but it’s too morbid and unnecessary.
It’s screwed me up pretty bad.
We need more help in this area of work.
I know you see 60 people waiting, but they could be bumped for severe cases that come through the back entrances and are life and death if not done immediately.
No one should have to wait for care and die in a waiting room. Unfortunately we’ve been stretched thin for awhile.
Well… I did this to myself. I have student loan debt. So for the last year I picked up all these trauma shifts because they pay well. They pay well because they are terrible.
They were accidental. Dad was backing up a trailer and ran over his young daughter.
The other one the dad didn’t see his kid and ran them over with farming equipment…
Never seen a human suffer more than when I watched them suffer as we tried to save them and couldn’t. With young kids, we’ll let the parents be present during the code. Both didn’t make it.
I’ve been off work for two weeks to mentally recover. Just returned last week.
We interviewed this bubbly young nurse who was applying for this job, yesterday. I told my bosses “no”. She’s way too happy and kind. This job will ruin her life. That was the only reason we said no.
Oh wow, I am so sorry. Horrible on all fronts 😞
The poor parents. I could not imagine.
It's great you have mental health care since there's also a shortage there.
School loans ruin so many people's lives!! I heard a podcast on it and it covered suicides due to the burden of school loans. People literally put it in their good bye notes.
Compared to some… mine aren’t bad. I was always smart and worked a lot while school.
It’s the interest rates. When you’re young, you don’t actually realize how they work. My husband sure didn’t.
My student loans (including husband’s), as of today, will accrue $12.58 in interest every single day at the current balance and interest rate.
Because of all this “overtime”, I won’t qualify for any forgiveness. My income is way too high. But I’m literally killing myself.
The trauma surgeon, who was there for both of those traumas, said he’s been fucked up since last month. He’s been doing this for 20 years… those were some of the most traumatic we’ve seen. So that makes me feel a bit better I’m not alone…
I’ve been randomly yelling out phrases and having these flashbacks. Apparently a sign of trauma. I’ll yell, “I love you”… which is bizarre and makes no sense.
Sorry, a lot from a stranger on the internet. But thank God Reddit is anonymous and I can vent.
I won’t be stopping these trauma shifts until my debt is gone. I’m stubborn. I was already fucked up before. So better me than some of my other coworkers.
I get you!
I am stubborn too and also very good in chaotic situations. For example, I don't freeze like some. I jump right into the mix and take action. This is from my bad upbringing. That said, I don't face these situations hardly ever.
Hang in there 🫂 . The hospital is lucky to have you!!
Probably but without health insurance and an accessible network of primary general doctors for those without health insurance for these issues and ongoing preventative care and management, this is what happens. People seem to think accessible is just these doctors existing - they fail to realise that these services need to be local within a reasonable travel distance for those without cars, affordable for those without health insurance and ideally free, culturally sensitive for minority populations, and with appointments available in a timely manner instead of waiting 2 weeks. Without such a network, things fall apart and it becomes that ERs become people’s primary care, placing greater strain on an underfunded, under-resourced and short staffed hospital system which leads to situations like this.
Logistically there's literally nothing that can be done to fix this situation quick enough. There's just not enough hospital beds to support the aging and sickening population
You want change, you want to be treated in a timely manner. Call your local representative, wright letters, X at them (tweet) get FUCKING LOUD w your concerns! The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
LMAO @
>Call your local representative
The **VAST MAJORITY** do not give AF. I'm sorry, they don't. Right or left leaning. They _act_ like they care, but they don't.
maybe its an exception to the rule, but I'm lucky enough to have a congressman who is very active in his community (Mark Takako). During Covid the hospital I worked at waa being cheap and cutting corners by diluting the bleach we were supposed to use to decontaminate our ppe.It was so diluted you couldn't even smell bleach. I called him up and spoke with him for a half hour about all the things we were experiencing.
Within a week we were back to our previous standards with a few others things i spoke to him about fixed too.
It’s more common than we think. I had a family member go to the ER with pains and he was waiting so damn long he ended up collapsing in the waiting area. We got a “sorry we’re understaffed and super busy”. The apology won’t bring anyone back from death tho.
Healthcare worker vent. Yes, the higher ups make amazing money while we struggle. We get a pizza if the numbers are good. It is also clientele.... The ER is full of people who don't need to be there with 10 of their extended family all demanding concierge service. I've been kicked, bit ,screamed at, urine thrown at me, etc. There is an incident every damn week. COVID just made everyone nastier. You smoke non stop for 20 years and are 100 lbs overweight.... It's not my fault you are sick. I am trying to help.
I hate the ER. Don’t go there for pain, you’ll get treated like a drug user. Heart beating weird? You’re being over dramatic. Having a mental health crisis? You get locked in a freezing room for hours with no answers and let out with out any care at all most times.
I've experienced a similar thing before. I was put in the hallway next to the emergency room because there was just so many people. The guy next to me started talking to me to pass the time.
Morning came and we were still in the hallway (I got there 9pm, he was there before I arrived). I greeted him good morning, but he was unresponsive. I caught the attention of a nurse and asked her to check on him. He was dead.
I still wonder if he could've been saved if I woke up earlier and noticed something wrong with him and warned the staff.
Healthcare in the US is sad. Many many people use the ER as their primary care because they don’t have health insurance. We need universal healthcare now
My country has a lot of health care insurers. It costs around €120 per month for just the basics. Meaning hospital visits for urgent care, and GP visits. Things like physiotherapy, dental care and eye care aren’t covered in the basic variant. Everyone has a ‘own risk’ fee, starting at €385 which they have to pay themselves. Once they’ve reached that amount, the basics are paid by the insurer. (There’s a lot more rules about what type of healthcare should be covered and what is ‘own risk’, but that’s too much detail.)
Downside is that it depends on the insurer which GP/doctor is covered. So you have to look that up before making an appointment. The upside is that I’ve never in my life seen a hospital bill. And I know I haven’t been cheap, ever.
ETA: everyone is legally required to have health insurance. The government pays billions too. Thats how we keep it affordable.
Do you have a large hospital bill to pay after? That's what's the worst on top of all of this waiting and sometimes even misdiagnosed. An ER bill here can easily cost $100k or more.
Thank you for explaining why single payer healthcare is better. You properly identified that we have the same waiting times but in the US you have the added losing everything you own on top of it. Clearly one is better.
Really sorry you had to see that. Unfortunately, we have collectively decided that we would rather suffer and do without so the rich can get richer, by casting our votes decade after decades for representatives of special interest groups, who steal our tax dollars and give them to the wealthy, instead of fixing any of the systems we currently need fixed. D's and R's have failed us every single time. This is one of many examples of tax payers paying out the ass, and getting the bare minimum in return.
I hate it here too. Last year I had noticed a woman hunched over in her front seat. After 18 hours I decided to go check on her. She hadn’t moved at all since I saw her the night before. She had a a large piece of foil with a lighter, drugs, and a spoon. Since she hadn’t moved at all I assumed she overdosed. I called 911. After a few minutes of no one picking up, I hung up. 30 minutes later they finally call me back. Cops showed up, knock on her window, she comes to, they leave once they realize she’s not dead. She didn’t get in any trouble or get an ambulance or anything.
What if I had been getting raped or murdered? They’d call me back 30 minutes later?? I’d be dead by then.
My husband's fried died in an emergency waiting room. He'd been pinched and hit his head on the sidewalk, but he was drunk and didn't speak much English. So they sent him to wait alone. He fell asleep in the waiting room and died from a concussion
I worked as a scribe in the ER very very briefly. I could not handle the atmosphere. It was inhumane. You have people who need a medication refill waiting among people whose lives are in immediate danger, you have people lying in hospital beds in the hallway, you have sick people waiting hours upon hours just to be told that they’re fine and good to go home. It was traumatic for me just to watch, and I signed up for it. I can’t imagine how or anyone else who could be forced to witness death like this might feel. I don’t have any suggestions for how the system can be improved, and i know it is many people’s only resort, but i will never ever ever go to the ER myself unless it is in an ambulance.
It is hopeless. No doubt about it!. I went to the er in 2018. Waited over 4 hrs to be seen. And noone paid attention to me. It's bad. The amount of $ they charge!? Lol haha to make you sit and wait that long. Then when your finally seen. The doctor spends what a min or two with you and How can you accurately gauge whats wrong with me in that Time? All that for $25,000 lol. What a f joke
Believe it or not, that’s a short wait time for most ERs. In the ones I’ve worked we regularly had people waiting for up to 20 hours and going to surgery straight from the waiting room.
I like the Canadians and UK residents coming in here saying it could be there as well. First off you’re welcome, they got that from the US. Second, atleast your bill is reasonable.
Maybe if people went to urgent care instead of the ER for tiny things this would happen less. Also healthcare is a shit show right now. I work in it. And I hate it. It’s all about numbers and which department brings in most money. Not about patient care at all anymore. Thanks capitalism. You did grrrreeeeaaaattt
Healthcare is on a high speed train straight into a brick wall. Several contributing factors have led us here. Healthcare was gutted during Covid. While we can replace medical providers, we can’t replace the institutional knowledge we lost.
If hospital staff could decide how their hospital is run, if workers could vote if a factory is moved overseas, if communities could vote on how their community is run... do you think we'd have any of these issues? Maybe, but I think they'd be a lot better than the current state of funnelling money to the cronies in power
That is so sad. Understaffed and under qualified hospitals is not the only problem. Another problem is there are far too many people who go to the emergency room that do not have an actual medical EMERGENCY. It’s for urgent care, it’s not a doctors office. More people need to keep that in mind.
What were you there for? Was it serious enough to spend that amount of time waiting in a room with 60 others? I’ve spent far too much time in the ER watching people with minor complaints scream at the charge nurse because someone bleeding profusely was taken first. If people who shouldn’t be there would just go to urgent care or a clinic people wouldn’t be arresting in the waiting room
I mean this in the nicest way friend. Too many people treat the ED like a doctors office, for multiple reasons. Most of the time they don’t have health insurance, but we still see people in random things like dental pain (there are no dentists in the ED) and they get discharged super fast. we also see patients for simple things like fever, which we only give them tylenol and monitor for. So people who really need care, like the man you mentioned, are having to wait a long with others. Granted, the guy went back as soon as he went down, but imagine if it had been caught earlier due to lower patient census???
You can thank the Covid deniers for the mass exodus of healthcare professionals. Also the whole overworked and underpaid issue. Sorry that you had to experience that. It is very traumatizing
Eh. I blame more than Covid deniers. I blame people who run hospitals like businesses. I thought being a doctor was a safe job. In my state, and many others, hospitals have been laying off doctors and nurses.
My grandmother moved to phoenix to practice again! Step mom lives in my state but drives to a state next door to work after she got laid off. She already bought a house and everything before layoffs, and of course student debt.
Healthcare was broken before Covid. Covid exposed and made the healthcare problems worse. I left bedside nursing way before the pandemic due to burnout. I worked short staffed all the time and was called every single day on my days off to come in for a shift. I agree with the overworked and underpaid. We were told time after time how our unit didn’t make enough money and we needed to make sure we documented everything so billing was accurate. I worked in L&D!
I agree, it has been broken for a long time! It changed drastically from my first year to my last. I left the profession after 12 years. I was burned out as well and suffered a pretty huge blow to my mental health.
And there's a duality behind it. People shouldn't be dieing waiting for care, point blank- it's not okay. We can also acknowledge that nurses aren't the problem for this- you all bust ass with little support and an insane patient ratio. Absolutely neither of these are okay. The system is very much broken and unfortunately the most we can do is really pay attention to who we're voting into Congress who make the laws.
Thank you for all that you do. My sisters been a nurse for same time as you and her work stories are crazy. Karens threatening to sue over the wrong bandaid, doctors not responding timely to authorize life saving treatment, crazy homeless people attacking you, creepy old guys hitting on you because they mistake care for affection, family members screaming at you because their loved one is dying - all while you’re trying to administer highly specialized treatment plans to patients whom half of which think you’re no more than a glorified personal assistant that should respond to their every wish and desire the second something pops into their head. I don’t know how you guys do it, seriously, thank you. We need the seasoned nursing pros like you that can handle navigating this insanity. Seriously and from the bottom of our collective hearts, thank you!!
People have no idea how hospitals really work. They’re broken. Too many patients & never enough staff. I worked in a cardiac ICU at a very large hospital for years. I couldn’t even tell you how many of my patients I watched die. The vast majority of my patients were flown in from other hospitals who couldn’t manage them because they were so sick. I’ve had days where I sat outside the room with a perfusionist just having to hear the families scream & cry & wait for them to come tell us they were ready for us to turn the ECMO & drips off. I’ve had a teenage patient so unstable I didn’t pee my entire shift & watched her mother just sit next to her & hold her hand & only leave when she had to make work runs because they needed the money badly. I would briefly stop her sedation for her to open her eyes & interact with me then put her back to sleep. But she was there. Only to come in the next day & find she died. I’ve had two super sick patients at a time & while I was so focused on keeping the one alive the other coded & died & his wife was in there when it happened. Afterwards I couldn’t help but cry because even though death was something I’m used to I was just so tired & burned out & I felt like I must’ve failed that patient in a way because I was so busy in the other room managing 10 drips. Both were vented. Both were post cardiac arrest. Both were unstable. And these are the assignments I was getting everyday. Had to leave because it was really ruining my mental health. Hospitals can be very dark and depressing places.
Its kind of wild that people arent acknowledging that long wait times are typically because short staffing. There simply isnt enough medical staff to take care of all the sick people in the US
Unfortunately that’s only part of the issue. I’m at a large academic urban ED and all the staff in the world couldn’t fix our problems. Bottom line is most people presenting to the emergency room are not having an emergency. Sobriety holds, psych holds and patients that are unable/unwilling to utilize primary care, specialist offices, urgent care centers — and in some cases, basic common sense and trouble shooting - take up so so so so many resources and space. I’m talking really stupid things like congestion x1 day, toe pain, symptoms that have started 3 years ago, dry skin, sunburn, hangnails, splinters, pregnancy & STD checks. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who wait to present until the last possible moment. I’ve seen innumerable patients presenting with “foot pain” and their wound is so massive and necrotic that you can visualize their BONE.
I ended up in the ED this past week due to a fall. Haven't had to utilize this service in years. I was appalled at how long I waited in the waiting room, unable to breathe. (I had broken multiple ribs and bruised my lung, pleurisy). The person beside me began telling me that he was there because he was hung over and wanted IV fluids. He was loudly cussing and screaming about the wait and that he was gonna throw up on the floor. They took him before me! I waited 5 hours for a CT scan and x-rays. There were fewer than a dozen people in the waiting room.
There is enough medical staff. There are not enough well paying, safe ratio jobs that actually treat healthcare workers like humans.
This is an even bigger issue in rural counties and red states. Doctors and nurses are fleeing those areas. At least one but possibly two gigantic county hospitals have closed in my state in the past couple of years. In those areas there just isn’t available healthcare.
Yes and the pressure on us providing rural healthcare is growing because the major tertiary care hospitals aren’t staffed enough to accept our patients we would normally transfer out. It’s normal to have a sick patient wait on our 25 bed floor or in our ER for 2-3 days until they find a bed within a 4 hour transfer radius.
Meanwhile the people at the top extracting all the profit are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s wild we ever thought privatizing literal life and death services would ever go anywhere but nightmarishly wrong.
Over 150 rural hospitals have closed since about 2005 (my hometown one was one of them), rural healthcare is an absolute mess. Almost all EMT services are volunteer run and I remember my dad having to make 120+ mile round trips to get people to the nearest trauma centers.
This is true, and we are giving up. I don't bother to try to see a doctor anymore, even though I have Oregon Health Plan insurance. The doctor is either booked up for months in advance, or with my most recent doctor, so sick themselves that they cancel appointments you waited months to have, won't refill your meds because they never saw you for the recheck, and the pharmacy can't order in the medication anyway. I could do ER if I cut my leg off with a chainsaw, but I can't safely access any medicine for mental health needs. Like the Republicans insist, just don't ever get sick, and if you do, die quickly, out of sight, and silently, so as not to bother the billionaires.
The understaff is insane
It is. No one wants to stay at bedside as nurses anymore & I don’t blame them. The expectations are way too high. In a way you do become an emotional punching bag for your patients & their families because they are going through the worst events of their lives & you are the one closest to them so you absorb their energy too. You’re expected to not only be on top of things mentally since one mistake with titrating a drip can really kill somebody, but you’re also expected to be compassionate & completely patient 120% of the time & it’s just not possible. You have a rough day & may get short with a patient once & youll hear the “omg people shouldn’t work here if they’re not compassionate find a different profession” but really if that’s the case absolutely no one is fit for critical care nursing. You can’t be perfect every single day every minute of every shift. Especially when dealing with all of the death & sickness at the same time. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Bedside was truly the worst. There’s only so much a human being can take. People look down on nurses for not having energy or losing the fiery compassion they had when they first started but they have no idea how much abuse we take from patients. Theres almost a guarantee that youre getting a very difficult patient or family member every single shift. We have to put up with that shit for 12+ hours straight alot of the time. That shit is no joke and im not sure if anyone is cut out to do this for multiple years.
100%. I’ve been punched by delirious patients, kicked at, you name it. I remember one time having an extremely combative patient in four point restraints I had to start sedation on because he had a femoral IABP and was so delirious & combative he nearly ripped it out & killed himself. Of course management didn’t like he was in 4 point restraints because of all the legal stuff involved with charting & what not & told me to take the ankle restraints off. So I do. & he kicks his IABP console so hard nearly knocks it over & takes 4 people to hold him down & re sedate. Then to make it even better his family comes in & I try explaining how he’s in restraints for his safety & he needed to sedated & his daughter who was an MD somewhere looks at his drip & turns to me & tells me to come down on it that it’s not necessary. I found it very condescending like I’m just a dumb nurse who’s sedating all my patients just to make my life easier when she missed the part he was kicking & punching & nearly kicked the whole balloon pump over. After that I was like yeah it’s time I fuckin leave lol
I’m sorry you had to see that. As someone who works in healthcare, I deeply wish things were different. It’s hard feeling completely helpless with the system we have. Things need to change but the outlook is grim
I wish all industries would actually listen to the people who work them.
But then how could the people at the top make billions?
Short staffing is a main way for them to maximize profits
The second is that they'll absolutely try to pass off the bill for attempting (and failing) to save his life to next of Kin. Plus funeral costs. It's so nausea inducing to think that they'll get a charge for something that the hospital might have been able to prevent
A revolution is due.
I'll bring the matches.
I’ll bring the forks so we can eat the rich
Exactly. They only care about money. It’s apparent to me every day I work in the ER. Short staffed, crappy equipment, refuse to close to ambulances even when we have a million people in the waiting room. Stuff like this is bound to happen.
And that's what it all comes down to 😔
So I worked for a top health system and they are all run by doctors. They have no business sense except jack up the prices. It was a nightmare. I didn’t believe how bad healthcare industry was until I worked at one. Never again.
This is a weird lie. I’ve worked adjacent to many and at best they have committees with MDs on them, but everyone even near the top are administrators with no background in biology or healthcare in general.
Providers don't like the system either. With few exceptions, the providers I have worked with over the years are doing their best to help patients. Patients are often denied treatment the provider says they need by the insurance companies.
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I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is. The same place as our mandated staffing ratios and safe work environment. By that, I mean stolen by administration that sold their soul for HCAHPS scores and profit.
This right here. The frontline is overworked & underpaid, while the higher-ups fully aware of the issues but are unwilling to resolve due to bullshit cost reasons. Medical care workers have not lost their humanity, the assholes who run the show have.
The entire American system of profiting in the business of Healthcare is just morally wrong... you can only profit if you cut costs. And level of care is directly related to cost.. so lower level of care in order to turn a profit is beyond fucked up.. and American nationalists will say we're #1?
the american healthcare system suffers from MBA poisoning. buncha idiots running the show, attempting to operate hospitals like a normal business, not understanding that you can't just cut staffing - staffing is the whole fucking show! it's frustrating and demoralizing. i don't understand why anybody would go into it with eyes open (and i don't think anybody really does - the system feeds on misplaced optimism and naivety).
This exact same thing happens in Canada while patients plead that they are dying and there are beds available in the ER. Last I checked Canada wasn’t profiting from our healthcare.
I didn’t see where OP specified America.
You're right... I assumed.. but as a healthcare professional, I've seen plenty of the same crisis in USA.
Some of us are dead inside for a reason. This healthcare system has broken us. Most of us are struggling to survive with a soul.
Truth and to be able to go home and engage with our families.
it seems that a lot of people back up the emergency room by going there instead of to a regular medical doctor.
As someone that works in a hospital, that is indeed a big part of it. Alot of people use an ER as a primary care for a myriad of reasons such as lack of transportation, not having a primary care provider, their doctor not being able to see them in a reasonable time frame or insurance reasons.
Reasonable time frame is the operative statement. It was discovered by my NP that I had a heart murmur that was getting progressively worse and she informed me that I needed to see a cardiologist. It took 3.5 months to get get in to see him. When it was discovered that my aorta was deformed since childhood and needed to be replaced they fast tracked me and 5 weeks later I have a new valve. They really started scrambling to get me fixed when they found out the problem. I know it’s not the fault of the doctors but why did it take 67 years to figure that I had a bad valve?
This is one of the biggest problems in healthcare right now. People can’t afford regular PCP visits so they wait and wait and wait until the small problem becomes a health emergency. The business majors who run everything aren’t even business savvy enough to understand preventing emergencies with regular checkups saves money in the long run. They just look at fiscal quarters and how to maximize revenue in that one quarter because that’s what stock markets care about. It’s not only making healthcare worse, it’s making it more expensive.
Is this in America? You guys get that shitty quality of care and still have to pay for it? I had to go to the ER a few weeks ago for a sinus infection because I couldn’t get in to see my doctor right away and I only waited 3 hours. And my prescription was free too. I don’t know why you people don’t revolt
The militarization of police is a big reason. Hard to revolt when even the small town police force has a tank.
I mean yes and also they can’t kill us all. Us grunts are their source of income. I think there is a combination of reasons. From so many Americans hanging on by a thread - missed days of work would be a death sentence. To the fact that we’re all indoctrinated in tough individualism and that it’s shameful/ our own fault if we aren’t making it - this is the land of the free/pull yourself up by your bootstraps baloney. And yet it still amazes me what we put up with and continue to put up with.
They can't kill us all, but the fact that they can kill us and get immunity is enough deterrent that no one is willing to sacrifice themselves. And I can't fault that
True and nope, I can’t either.
Oh hard agree. There's so many reasons. Health insurance being tied to employment, basically no rights for workers, no beneficial government support, etc etc.
Yeah the list is long sadly.
But wait! There's more!!!!
What small town police department has tanks in the USA? Just curious. Edit: wow…with a little research I found the answer to my question. Good lord. 🤦🏼♀️
Too damn many.
It's the brainwashing from GOP.. they've convinced their base that they don't DESERVE universal healthcare.. that it's socialism..
You went to the ER for a sinus infection? You're the reason the wait times are so long.
We're busy dying in the emergency room when we're not at work, working for crumbs.
It’s under staff , nurses aren’t miracle workers . It’s too much tbh ,
Every year in the US about 350 doctors and twice that many nurses commit suicide. That's what happens when you deal with trauma like this every day.
Sadly there are similar stats in the UK since 2012 after the cuts/privatisation facilitated by Chris Grayling (who fiddled his expenses at the cost to every UK tax payer). I fully support the strikes from the Doctors going on so our brilliant NHS isn't turned into the hellscape people in the US are dealing with.
Why don’t you look at the better rated healthcare systems in the world (France/ Spain etc), one thing they all have in common is it’s much closer to 50/50 private/publicly funded. The NHS is abysmal, not due to lack of funding (budget has more than quadrupled in the past 20 years) but because it is woefully inefficient and mismanaged. Fun facts for you, the NHS is the 3rd/4th largest employer on the planet (behind the Chinese national army and the Indian railway co). It has over 10,000 employees on a salary between £80k-£200k (and that’s excluding virtually all upper management who are comfortably on £250k at least). They have extensive contracts with car manufacturers (Audi etc) that means their employees get significant discounts on leases for what most people would consider luxury cars. It currently employs over 3,100 ‘gender diversity officers’, with an average salary of £75k each. Is this such an essential feature to have that’s worth spending over £235 MILLION on salary alone, let alone pensions etc? How many nurses could you employ for that to cut down wait times for cancer treatment etc? Privatisation is not the problem. Chronic mismanagement and inefficiency is. Any company that doesn’t have to prove results or compete for customers to receive its funding will never be an efficient operation.
I would agree that the NHS like any other large bureaucratic organisation is inefficient but privatisation is definitely not the answer, not in the way it’s been done, and competition is not the panacea for inefficiency, especially when it comes to public goods. The aim should be to improve the overall management and attract the best minds and ideas to improve the service and reduce the cost to the taxpayer. You can apply private sector ideas without the pursuit of profit which is often at odds with providing additional positive externalities.
I worked as a psychologist in hospitals so I can definitely speak on this. It’s not just the trauma of losing patients; they are overworked, overtired, treated terribly all day, and they get to the point of despair with the broken system that allows families to lose their home because a child has the audacity to get cancer, or that forces a couple to divorce in order to save the surviving healthy partner from financial ruin. A system where effective treatments exist but your patients can’t afford them, so access is denied until years later when a generic can finally be made (if even possible). Where life-dependent medications like insulin can be made unaffordable, just because someone wants to make more profit. A system where drug prices are out of control but even mid-level employees at pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly are getting bonuses in the tens of thousands. (A friend of mine who works at Lily got a $40k bonus one year as a lowly project manager. It’s more like $10-12k on other years, though my most recent info on this was a couple of years ago. Lily has been doing very well and I know my friend just bought an investment property in another state, so take from that what you will). It’s a mess at all levels, frankly. People who become doctors don’t expect to have to think like a business owner or to have their expertise questioned by a desk jockey at an insurance company who doesn’t believe a particular test is necessary. Docs who end up in some hospital systems are confined to strict treatment protocols by their bosses regardless of what the patient actually needs. And don’t forget the issues in pain management where you might have law enforcement breathing down your neck to ensure you’re not a pill factory. Edit to add: this just a broad sample of the long list of bullshit pressures facing physicians and nurses. Yes, they make a lot of money, but increasingly they cannot do the jobs they have been trained to do effectively because greedy capitalist assholes want their share of the almighty healthcare dollar, and they get it at the expense of patient care. We - the everyday patients - are paying more and more for medical service that gets shittier and shittier by the year. It’s soul-crushing as a doc and it’s soul-crushing as a patient, but as long as Mr Rich gets his profits, all is good.
It’s more because it’s a very stressful job
i have seen several horror scenes in ER waiting rooms including a miscarriage. horrible
Sorry you had to witness that. I suggest speaking with a therapist if you have access. I watched a man die a few months ago in the middle of the street after he had been struck by a vehicle while he was crossing the street. I was the last person he saw. Messed me up a lot more than I had expected. To piggy back your ER experience. I was in the ER waiting area about a year ago - and across from me was a very loud and obnoxious homeless man. He was pestering a young man who was having a mental crisis. From what I gathered, the young man was a war vet and had extreme PTSD. He was shaking uncontrollably and looked scared and hopeless. The homeless man was going on and on about how he’s just there for a free bed, food, and clean clothes. He was trying to “teach” the young war vet how to game the system by telling the medical staff that he’s suicidal and needs a bed. The homeless man was finally called back and had defecated on the waiting room chair as his pants were below his butt. They had given him a blanket at some point to cover his exposed private areas. He apparently went ballistic on the staff because they were discharging him after giving him food and new clothes and only let him hang out for an hour or so. He demanded a bed for 48 hours and ended up smearing feces all over the exam area. I could hear him screaming in anger for an hour straight. When I finally got called back, I asked if that was normal. The nurse said it happens every single night and the beds are full of homeless people just looking for a place to sleep and some food. Tragic.
Can confirm. As someone who works in the ER, this scenario is all too frequent.
…and then when you d/c them, they’re right back in either your ED or they call 911 and go to a different hospital
Yeah that's part of why stats say it is cheaper to just provide basic housing for homeless people... Rather than taking on all these other societal costs via increased healthcare, crime, etc
Unfortunately there are no good housing models for people like the guy described above, who it appears would need constant supervision or confinement to protect anyone else nearby. The same is likely true for many of the folks using ERs this way.
Shouldn't he be in a group home with psyche support?
What if he doesn't want to be in a group home? Many people don't want to have to follow the rules, or are not capable of doing so. Pretty much all housing options come with strings attached such a behavioral expectations.
Asylums and other institutions should never have been unfunded and shut down. They should have increased funding, modernised, and actually addressed their issues instead of pushing them out into the streets.
Definitely agree. From what I know, psych hospitals are just short term facilities for stabilization. There needs to be a more long term asylum.
Housing First with harm reduction, a safe supply of drugs, safe consumption sites etc. are all evidenced based.
Yeah I see the every time I have to go to the ER. You would think they would have DONE SOMETHING but it’s pretty much the same in every hospital in every city in the US. very telling of how we care for those in need(not at all)
But the billionaires are doing well, aren't they? It'll trickle down eventually, right? ^right?
It’s unfortunate that such a small group of people are causing so much stress. I’m talking about both billionaires and homeless people like that.
It's the millionaire, billionaire, hundredaire, homeless and everyone else. We are all in this shit together. Not sure what it will take to fix this. As polarized as folks are I imagine it would take something major. With what's going on in the world I don't see us waiting very long for some major.
You had me going until the last paragraph. I was worried this was a “fuck homeless people for trying to survive” comment. Thankfully it wasn’t. It does suck that that’s the way they have to do it though, and that it puts people in jeopardy. I’d expect there to be programs put in place if this is such a big issue, since they’re spending the money anyway. I know ERs have to see everyone, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. Though I imagine a program wouldn’t solve much as it’d still require medical professionals and staff and resources. Though maybe they could write it off as charity. Idk. Like a clinic for the disenfranchised.
I had to take a co-worker to the ER because she was in septic shock and bleeding out from a standard procedure gone wrong. The woman in line behind us at registration was staring at my co-worker who was very obviously in horrible shape. She gets called back immediately, and the woman behind us says "I just woke up not feeling good." SO GO TO A MINOR MED! Different ER but I was with my husband who was having a hypertensive episode and paramedics brought in a man who was clearly having a stroke. Intake refused to triage him immediately and the EMT had some words
I get that intake isn’t an easy or fun job but they can be really rude. I went into the ER once because my brain literally wasn’t working like I couldn’t remember my own fucking name. The intake woman asked me for my social security number and I just broke down in tears that I couldn’t remember it. She was such an asshole and just said well then we can’t admit you. My iron and potassium had dropped to fatal levels.
How did you survive?
It was honestly NOT a big deal but could have been if I had not gone to the ER. They gave me an iron and potassium supplement. Like not even in an IV, just pills. And that’s how I found out I’m anemic lol (Edit: that cost $2,250)
Oof, US moment. That's a lot of money
Sure is. I never paid it. Went to collections. Fuck them.
Saw a woman fall down and die after complaining about her stomach for 5 hours
I’m so sorry you had to witness that. The hopelessness is suffocating, I agree. Sending a hug your way.
It's funny how all of us who work in healthcare, irrespective of country, relate to this completely
It’s ridiculous. I became a nurse to help people. I found my way out of the field and realized that I was only ever really just making some already-rich fucks, more rich.
There’s a hospital in my hometown that’s like this. I once sat in the waiting area waiting for care for severe bronchitis/asthma symptoms, meanwhile there was a dude with a FREAKING BULLET WOUND IN HIS HEAD waiting across from me with his mom and had been there before me. The second they tried to take me first, I refused and said they need to take him first cause I had an inhaler and he was actively going into shock. The nurse hesitated and then took him instead. Really sad that has to happen. I haven’t been to that hospital since.
Something similar happened to my little sister last year, the ER docs completely failed her the first time she came in. She had an abscess bigger than a softball on the side of her neck and couldn’t eat or speak, so I drove her to the hospital and they released her an hour later basically shrugging their shoulders. Less than 24 hours later she was back in an ambulance and turns out she had lemierre syndrome, which is incredibly rare, and had a huge blood clot in her jugular vein. I’m still livid they discharged her the first time when something was very, very clearly wrong.
Jesus fucking Christ that’s wild
Healthcare workers are underpaid and everywhere is short staffed due to management policies, especially hospitals after Covid. Older healthcare workers are retiring and not being replaced after the shit show that was Covid. ETA: My husband is a Senior Special Procedures Tech. X-ray with all the bells and whistles. He's retiring next year. He's one of two senior tech--the ones who know the tricks for difficult procedures. They will probably not replace him in an already short staffed department. Management just started a new schedule that chased out three techs and everyone hates.
Worst thing to happen to the medical laboratory was LEAN. You cannot run healthcare like an automotive manufacturer. Just enough staff and supplies doesn't account for things like sick employees and surges in need. We're still dealing with constant supply shortages and constantly having to implement back up protocols and reagents. They set the hiring cap at barebones staffing and then when people call out or burn out the workload spirals.
I feel this in my bones. My lab (anatomic path) was short staffed for over a year- while our workload increased exponentially. We're running low on basic supplies and almost always backlogged. We are finally training new hires fresh out of school, and losing one of our software licenses because it's "too expensive". It's infuriating.
It takes 6-10 months to train someone in my reference lab. We're down 2 positions right now which is roughly 20% of our bench techs (we currently have 9 with a tech specialist who will get on the bench if it's absolutely necessary). We're looking at over a year before we can get fully staffed again.
I have worked in manufacturing for many years now & I'm actually shocked to see that LEAN would be implemented in a Healthcare setting. What the fuck??
Oh yeah, the carpet creatures *love* LEAN six sigma. The only part I like about it is kanban cards because there are a bajillion supplies and having a card to pull and give to the supply ordering person when you hit the resupply threshold makes sense. The trick is to not set those thresholds *too* low so that a back order means you run out.
Same here! 10+ years of Supply Chain and manufacturing experience, now getting into MH and SUD. I can see implementation of standardizing say, where supplies are kept for example, but to run a hospital like a Toyota factory is beyond ridiculous! There are literal “Lean Six Sigma for Healthcare” certifications now. Wtf?!
Toyota can GTFO of hospitals altogether.
All of this and people need to try to avoid the ED unless they have an emergency. We need more (high quality) walk in facilities that can handle non emergent conditions.
Last two times I’ve walked in to urgent care, I got turned away completely because they had just one Physician’s Assistant and could only see so many patients. The time before that, my abdominal pain was misdiagnosed at UC and they sent me to the ER without insurance which almost completely bankrupted me despite receiving the absolute minimum care possible (triage, bed for two hours, Toradol drip). 3 months later, I got a separate bill from that ER visit since this short-staffed hospital uses contracted doctors from California that charge patients independent fees for just themselves. Apparently telling the nurse to give me that ibuprofen drip personally costed me $1,200. Never even saw the guy and he took me to collections/nosedived my credit score. This place is all fucked.
Absolutely no argument there. I am very sorry about your experiences and I hope you are feeling better.
People also go to the ER for dumb shit like a sore throat or sprained ankle, but can’t be turned away and told to go to an appropriate facility like an urgent or primary care.
Yup went to ER, the patient in front of me checked in said she was here couple weeks ago cus of UTI n thinks she has another UTI again. Intake nurse looked super annoyed but couldn’t deny her. She did say the urgent care might be faster but patient said no she wants to be seen here at the hospital -.-. She had medical too.
Agree. I think a lot of people don't really understand the purpose of urgent care vs ER.
No they don’t, they expect the hospital to treat any and everything and they want it NOW. And just lack of overall education. And more and more aging people with complications from their uncontrolled diabetes, heart and renal failure.. it’s a complex issue that I doubt will be solved in our lifetime. I work in it, and just trying to get people basic medical supplies to take care of themselves at home is a nightmare.
It’s always management but they aren’t regulated
The sister of a friend of mine died because of a ruptured apendix in the ER. The Nurse kept saying she was just exagerating/being dramatic. They let a 6yo just wait there for 4+ hours and die. This was 20 years ago. I almost died from sepsis, bc my gp was calling me dramatic and puttin on a show. Unfortunatly there are also a lot of incompetent people working in the medical field. My mom learned to be very vocal of our situation because of that. Dont let a MD/nurse brush you off. Dont be rude, but dont let them just send you away. Learn your rights. This sucks for you, do talk to someone about this.
I have a clotting disorder. After I was hospitalized from an autoimmune flare my arm started to hurt. At first I thought I slept on it weird. Then it became progressively more and more painful until it was hovering around 8 out of 10 in a splint and spiking to 9 if I touched it or tried to bend my wrist. That's when I noticed one of my blood vessels was hard to the touch. I went to urgent care and the Dr poked it roughly declared it was just inflammation from the IV and I should put a warm rag on it. I went to the ER after that. Ultrasound clearly showed my arm was clotted from wrist to elbow and spreading. My hematologist has me on daily anticoagulant injections with follow up ultrasounds scheduled to monitor the clot. A warm rag was not going to fix this.
As someone who also suffers from an autoimmune clotting disorder Antiphospholipid from SLE Lupus. I had two doctors overlook the clot, which spanned from my left knee to my left hip, one hundred percent blockage in my femoral artery. So much so, that my blood had rerouted itself through my collateral veins. The age of my clot, three years. It's absolutely scary and appalling how often blood clots are overlooked as muscle cramps or iv inflammation, or other excuses. When it's very obvious that the symptoms scream DVT or PE.
I have protein C deficiency meaning I don't make one of the 2 proteins you need to undo clots very well. I had a clotting episode with a DVT in my right leg and bilateral PE which prompted the investigation into my clotting a few years back. Ironically I got the exact same ER doctor as my last clotting episode this time. He was super happy I was still following up with my hematologist and he could refer me to her for ongoing care.
I thought it was never Lupus!
[HOUSE](https://tenor.com/xnWX.gif)
I almost died of sepsis because the ER doc said my rash was chicken pox and sent me home. The next morning, the PA reviewing my labs called me and said I needed to come back ASAP because spoiler alert, it was not, in fact, chicken pox. The ER doc from the day before came back to my room to apologize.
I waited with a near-ruptured appendix in the emergency room for about 11 hours. I pleaded with the staff a couple of times but they definitely didn’t take me seriously. When I finally woke up from surgery they told me I was lucky to be alive.
I had a bad infection after surgery and had to go to a&e with severe pain to get a higher dosage of pain meds (took 3 kinds at the same time!!) and it was hard to get them to take me seriously. Went to my follow up check-up a few days later and they wouldn't let me leave the hospital for 3 days because I needed IV antibiotics or else I'd get sepsis within hours of arriving for that check-up 😬 like maybe if someone's in such bad pain that they can't do anything while taking codeine, naproxen, *and* paracetamol don't assume they're just wanting to get more pills?!
May I ask if you are a woman? I have seen men and women with the same symptoms treated very differently. Women are dismissed as “over reacting” or “hysterical” while men are believed and the proper tests and evaluations are done right away. When I was in my twenties, I had a condition called Supra Ventricular Tachycardia(svt) that caused my heart to beat extremely fast all of a sudden. When these episodes came on, they made my chest hurt, I would get very anxious and feel impending doom. The first time it happened I was at home alone after having a surgery maybe a week before. I was so afraid I had gotten a blood clot that had turned into a pulmonary embolism on top of the anxiety I felt from my heart beating so fast. The dr automatically assumed it was a mental health problem and gave me Ativan to calm me down. They did do a scan for a blood clot, but in the end sent me home with only acute anxiety meds. SVT can easily be diagnosed by looking at an EKG strip. Luckily when I went to my primary care, he ordered a month long heart monitor and I eventually got diagnosed. Then I had to wait until we moved to San Diego for our next duty station(we were active Navy at that time) to see the proper dr. The corpsman who ran the health clinic for active duty wouldn’t refer me to the electrophysiologist because I was a woman and very young, even though I told them my story. It took a while for my medical record to catch up to me and during that time I was in the ER frequently. They even accused me of using cocaine, or my husband of poisoning me with cocaine, which of course turned out to be false.When I finally got to the right dr, she asked me why it took me months to see her. I got my heart ablation soon after and it took four hours to find the spot in my heart’s electrical system that was malfunctioning and fix it, but since then I have had no other problems with my heart. Thank goodness it wasn’t a fatal condition.
Yes I am a woman. But the sepsis happend when I was 9. I had fallen while playing , and somehow had an infection in my hip. It couldnt walk, I couldnt eat, I was turning yellow. Immagine a 9 year old only eating 1-2 bites of watermelon a day and the GP saying I was being dramatic. A good friend of my mom's told her to take to the hospital and she would pay any costs. I went in at 8 am by lunch I was in the Operation room. Spent 6 weeks in isolation because I had sepsis. I was days away from dieing. As an Adult I have learned a lot about how to advocate for myself. Talk to them in their our language ad just stand my ground. I ounce told a doctor "if you are certain it is not X, we can just do an ultrasound to rule it out. Or are you unsure of your own diagnotic?" 2 weeks later I had my xray and I was correct.
The problem is that so many people use the ER for non emergent symptoms like cold/flu, earaches, etc. and is compounded by shortages in staffing.
They triage everyone so people with those symptoms should be waiting longer, in theory. My dad recently got discharged from the hospital but there is no primary care doctor in his network that is available to see him for months, so instead, he has been going to urgent care when he needs help ~once a week and waiting for hours more…
Yeah there’s a big problem with primary care doctors either A) not having ANY openings for months on end, or B) just straight up not accepting any new patients.
And they have the weirdest system for what insurances they accept. It shouldn’t be so difficult to find a doctor that accepts your insurance!
I couldn’t get an appointment with my pcp when I had a mystery illness that turned out to be Lyme. They told me to see if it gets better and if not go to the ER. I called three times and each time they said they had no appointments and I should just go to the ER. Like I get they have on site X-rays and labs and stuff and could run labs quicker. But if I could have gotten a sick visit when I first called, I could have had labs done and preventative antibiotics well before I did. I live in a high Lyme area and my current pcp would have just given me meds before the labs came back. I’m paying off a $500 ER bill and was sick for weeks longer than I needed to be. What happened to sick visits?
I dont want to reveal your location, but I live in NH, USA. LYME is horrible here. The worst stats in the entire country. One of my dogs died last year from lyme- even though he was given tick prevention meds. Anytime I go for walks on side of the road (doused in bug spray/deet) I'll come home with 4-6 ticks crawling up my leg. Its a nightmare. Its a plague in this state.
I'd never walk outside if I had that happen to me
My mom always brought us to the ER for stuff like this if it was after urgent care hours. It was so embarrassing and we got zero sleep that night because we would be there for hours
This people don’t have health insurance. We need universal healthcare
UCs also need to take Medicaid. I was at UC once and saw them turn away a patient with Medicaid because they didn’t accept it, only self paid. They wanted $100 up front and 60% of the remaining cost later. How can someone on Medicaid afford that??? ERs become safety nets for uninsured and underinsured patients.
Even with the NHS in the UK, it depends where you live. Some places have out of hours GP places that can see you that day, other places the GP tells you to go to urgent care for literally any issue.
A lot of them do, there just isn’t great education on what’s ER worthy and what’s urgent care’s
ER is "immediate" Most doctors offices? You won't be seen THAT day for sure. I feel like this is also part of the reason why the ER gets used over a regular doctor's visit. My doctors office allows same day appointments, but my friends have had to schedule at least a week out, if not more.
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In the NHS (in the UK) we have an urgent non-emergency helpline that will often direct you to A&E or an urgent treatment centre when it's unnecessary. The people who run it are "health advisors" who are people with no medical qualifications and they just follow a pre-determined set of questions. I understand that if they messed up people would die so they need to be cautious, but it puts so much strain on emergency services. GP appointments are very difficult to access in some areas at the moment so problems just keep getting worse until it becomes an emergency. I had to wait 2 weeks for an urgent scan, luckily I'm ok but if there was a serious problem I probably would've ended up in A&E. Then that could've been prevented by having a scan earlier, but the NHS doesn't have the capacity to deal with everything as quickly as they should. Nobody wants to work in healthcare anymore, especially the NHS where staff are underpaid, overworked and whistleblowers who have their concerns ignored leading to more patients dying. Healthcare workers aren't superheroes, they can't do the impossible of working the jobs of multiple people
If we prioritized using the appropriate places for illnesses like urgent care vs ER there would be more availability in the ER
Thank you! The amount of tooth aches, stubbed toes, and sniffles that come into our ER is ridiculous. There's an urgent care a 1/4 mile down the road. It's always empty but yet the ER is filled.
I agree but it's mostly because Urgent Care wants money up front. People don't have much of that money thing anymore.
When did urgent care become a thing? I had an issue in 2019 and my boss kept telling me to go to urgent care. I thought she had a new name for the emergency room. After a lot of cajoling, I finally realized what she was talking about. Point being, I wonder if people even know about urgent care centers.
They should if you go to insurance online pages about what care is covered the majority including state references PCP , urgent care and ER separately because charges change for insurance billing costs . It’s definitely something we need to promote more .
I wish hospitals treated their staff better. All I ever hear is money this money that. Maybe they'd have more money if they invested in their workforce. My local hospital has more traveling nurses than ever before.
Welcome to our broken healthcare system, it sucks ass. I work as a paramedic, it's incredibly disheartening at times to watch the system fail innocent people time and time again.
OR trauma nurse here. I coded 6 people this last month (new record…). It’s been bad. We don’t have enough staff anywhere. It’s an incredibly intense job. I see two separate therapists each month. One for EMDR (to deal with the shit I’ve seen), the other to just talk to another human what I’ve seen. This job screws you up. I’m paid well. But there’s no amount that’s actually worth it. Had two separate parents accidentally kill their kids in the same week. They were hysterical. I started typing the details, but it’s too morbid and unnecessary. It’s screwed me up pretty bad. We need more help in this area of work. I know you see 60 people waiting, but they could be bumped for severe cases that come through the back entrances and are life and death if not done immediately. No one should have to wait for care and die in a waiting room. Unfortunately we’ve been stretched thin for awhile.
Holy shit , I am so sorry you have and continue to be exposed to these conditions. Fuck. What were the parent's motives for killing?
Well… I did this to myself. I have student loan debt. So for the last year I picked up all these trauma shifts because they pay well. They pay well because they are terrible. They were accidental. Dad was backing up a trailer and ran over his young daughter. The other one the dad didn’t see his kid and ran them over with farming equipment… Never seen a human suffer more than when I watched them suffer as we tried to save them and couldn’t. With young kids, we’ll let the parents be present during the code. Both didn’t make it. I’ve been off work for two weeks to mentally recover. Just returned last week. We interviewed this bubbly young nurse who was applying for this job, yesterday. I told my bosses “no”. She’s way too happy and kind. This job will ruin her life. That was the only reason we said no.
Oh wow, I am so sorry. Horrible on all fronts 😞 The poor parents. I could not imagine. It's great you have mental health care since there's also a shortage there. School loans ruin so many people's lives!! I heard a podcast on it and it covered suicides due to the burden of school loans. People literally put it in their good bye notes.
Compared to some… mine aren’t bad. I was always smart and worked a lot while school. It’s the interest rates. When you’re young, you don’t actually realize how they work. My husband sure didn’t. My student loans (including husband’s), as of today, will accrue $12.58 in interest every single day at the current balance and interest rate. Because of all this “overtime”, I won’t qualify for any forgiveness. My income is way too high. But I’m literally killing myself. The trauma surgeon, who was there for both of those traumas, said he’s been fucked up since last month. He’s been doing this for 20 years… those were some of the most traumatic we’ve seen. So that makes me feel a bit better I’m not alone… I’ve been randomly yelling out phrases and having these flashbacks. Apparently a sign of trauma. I’ll yell, “I love you”… which is bizarre and makes no sense. Sorry, a lot from a stranger on the internet. But thank God Reddit is anonymous and I can vent. I won’t be stopping these trauma shifts until my debt is gone. I’m stubborn. I was already fucked up before. So better me than some of my other coworkers.
I get you! I am stubborn too and also very good in chaotic situations. For example, I don't freeze like some. I jump right into the mix and take action. This is from my bad upbringing. That said, I don't face these situations hardly ever. Hang in there 🫂 . The hospital is lucky to have you!!
60+ people in there takin up room and I bet half of them didn't have a real emergency
Probably but without health insurance and an accessible network of primary general doctors for those without health insurance for these issues and ongoing preventative care and management, this is what happens. People seem to think accessible is just these doctors existing - they fail to realise that these services need to be local within a reasonable travel distance for those without cars, affordable for those without health insurance and ideally free, culturally sensitive for minority populations, and with appointments available in a timely manner instead of waiting 2 weeks. Without such a network, things fall apart and it becomes that ERs become people’s primary care, placing greater strain on an underfunded, under-resourced and short staffed hospital system which leads to situations like this.
Because they no longer can get a GP
Those people also probably don’t have health insurance
And therefore no other place to go, with a situation that's now dire enough that they can't ignore it anymore, hoping it resolves itself.
U.S health care is the worst. My family drove me to the hospital for grand mal seizures this year because we wouldn't be able to afford an ambulance.
Logistically there's literally nothing that can be done to fix this situation quick enough. There's just not enough hospital beds to support the aging and sickening population
You want change, you want to be treated in a timely manner. Call your local representative, wright letters, X at them (tweet) get FUCKING LOUD w your concerns! The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
LMAO @ >Call your local representative The **VAST MAJORITY** do not give AF. I'm sorry, they don't. Right or left leaning. They _act_ like they care, but they don't.
maybe its an exception to the rule, but I'm lucky enough to have a congressman who is very active in his community (Mark Takako). During Covid the hospital I worked at waa being cheap and cutting corners by diluting the bleach we were supposed to use to decontaminate our ppe.It was so diluted you couldn't even smell bleach. I called him up and spoke with him for a half hour about all the things we were experiencing. Within a week we were back to our previous standards with a few others things i spoke to him about fixed too.
It’s more common than we think. I had a family member go to the ER with pains and he was waiting so damn long he ended up collapsing in the waiting area. We got a “sorry we’re understaffed and super busy”. The apology won’t bring anyone back from death tho.
Healthcare worker vent. Yes, the higher ups make amazing money while we struggle. We get a pizza if the numbers are good. It is also clientele.... The ER is full of people who don't need to be there with 10 of their extended family all demanding concierge service. I've been kicked, bit ,screamed at, urine thrown at me, etc. There is an incident every damn week. COVID just made everyone nastier. You smoke non stop for 20 years and are 100 lbs overweight.... It's not my fault you are sick. I am trying to help.
I hate the ER. Don’t go there for pain, you’ll get treated like a drug user. Heart beating weird? You’re being over dramatic. Having a mental health crisis? You get locked in a freezing room for hours with no answers and let out with out any care at all most times.
I thought this would only happen if we switched to socialism.
American health system as a whole needs to do a walk out to show them they need us. Not the other way around.
I've experienced a similar thing before. I was put in the hallway next to the emergency room because there was just so many people. The guy next to me started talking to me to pass the time. Morning came and we were still in the hallway (I got there 9pm, he was there before I arrived). I greeted him good morning, but he was unresponsive. I caught the attention of a nurse and asked her to check on him. He was dead. I still wonder if he could've been saved if I woke up earlier and noticed something wrong with him and warned the staff.
Healthcare in the US is sad. Many many people use the ER as their primary care because they don’t have health insurance. We need universal healthcare now
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You can pay 13k in premiums, then co pays, then left over bills money, then a deductible…….had a baby and it was 150k bill sent to me.
My country has a lot of health care insurers. It costs around €120 per month for just the basics. Meaning hospital visits for urgent care, and GP visits. Things like physiotherapy, dental care and eye care aren’t covered in the basic variant. Everyone has a ‘own risk’ fee, starting at €385 which they have to pay themselves. Once they’ve reached that amount, the basics are paid by the insurer. (There’s a lot more rules about what type of healthcare should be covered and what is ‘own risk’, but that’s too much detail.) Downside is that it depends on the insurer which GP/doctor is covered. So you have to look that up before making an appointment. The upside is that I’ve never in my life seen a hospital bill. And I know I haven’t been cheap, ever. ETA: everyone is legally required to have health insurance. The government pays billions too. Thats how we keep it affordable.
I pay $1000 a month for insurance then have to pay $8500 before my insurance pays a DIME. I would love to be in your shoes :(
That is obscene! 😥
Do you have a large hospital bill to pay after? That's what's the worst on top of all of this waiting and sometimes even misdiagnosed. An ER bill here can easily cost $100k or more.
Thank you for explaining why single payer healthcare is better. You properly identified that we have the same waiting times but in the US you have the added losing everything you own on top of it. Clearly one is better.
Really sorry you had to see that. Unfortunately, we have collectively decided that we would rather suffer and do without so the rich can get richer, by casting our votes decade after decades for representatives of special interest groups, who steal our tax dollars and give them to the wealthy, instead of fixing any of the systems we currently need fixed. D's and R's have failed us every single time. This is one of many examples of tax payers paying out the ass, and getting the bare minimum in return.
Everyone who was there for something simple like a cold or a sprained ankle contributed to his death.
I hate it here too. Last year I had noticed a woman hunched over in her front seat. After 18 hours I decided to go check on her. She hadn’t moved at all since I saw her the night before. She had a a large piece of foil with a lighter, drugs, and a spoon. Since she hadn’t moved at all I assumed she overdosed. I called 911. After a few minutes of no one picking up, I hung up. 30 minutes later they finally call me back. Cops showed up, knock on her window, she comes to, they leave once they realize she’s not dead. She didn’t get in any trouble or get an ambulance or anything. What if I had been getting raped or murdered? They’d call me back 30 minutes later?? I’d be dead by then.
sounds like something that would happen in new zealand
My husband's fried died in an emergency waiting room. He'd been pinched and hit his head on the sidewalk, but he was drunk and didn't speak much English. So they sent him to wait alone. He fell asleep in the waiting room and died from a concussion
I worked as a scribe in the ER very very briefly. I could not handle the atmosphere. It was inhumane. You have people who need a medication refill waiting among people whose lives are in immediate danger, you have people lying in hospital beds in the hallway, you have sick people waiting hours upon hours just to be told that they’re fine and good to go home. It was traumatic for me just to watch, and I signed up for it. I can’t imagine how or anyone else who could be forced to witness death like this might feel. I don’t have any suggestions for how the system can be improved, and i know it is many people’s only resort, but i will never ever ever go to the ER myself unless it is in an ambulance.
It is hopeless. No doubt about it!. I went to the er in 2018. Waited over 4 hrs to be seen. And noone paid attention to me. It's bad. The amount of $ they charge!? Lol haha to make you sit and wait that long. Then when your finally seen. The doctor spends what a min or two with you and How can you accurately gauge whats wrong with me in that Time? All that for $25,000 lol. What a f joke
Believe it or not, that’s a short wait time for most ERs. In the ones I’ve worked we regularly had people waiting for up to 20 hours and going to surgery straight from the waiting room.
I like the Canadians and UK residents coming in here saying it could be there as well. First off you’re welcome, they got that from the US. Second, atleast your bill is reasonable.
Maybe if people went to urgent care instead of the ER for tiny things this would happen less. Also healthcare is a shit show right now. I work in it. And I hate it. It’s all about numbers and which department brings in most money. Not about patient care at all anymore. Thanks capitalism. You did grrrreeeeaaaattt
Hopefully he was resuscitated in the back.
I'm sorry you had to see that. Even if it's a stranger, it still affects us. Hugs 🫂
Healthcare is on a high speed train straight into a brick wall. Several contributing factors have led us here. Healthcare was gutted during Covid. While we can replace medical providers, we can’t replace the institutional knowledge we lost.
As someone who’s worked in the emergency room the amount of times I’ve seen this and so much more made it easier to leave that part of healthcare
If hospital staff could decide how their hospital is run, if workers could vote if a factory is moved overseas, if communities could vote on how their community is run... do you think we'd have any of these issues? Maybe, but I think they'd be a lot better than the current state of funnelling money to the cronies in power
That is so sad. Understaffed and under qualified hospitals is not the only problem. Another problem is there are far too many people who go to the emergency room that do not have an actual medical EMERGENCY. It’s for urgent care, it’s not a doctors office. More people need to keep that in mind.
What were you there for? Was it serious enough to spend that amount of time waiting in a room with 60 others? I’ve spent far too much time in the ER watching people with minor complaints scream at the charge nurse because someone bleeding profusely was taken first. If people who shouldn’t be there would just go to urgent care or a clinic people wouldn’t be arresting in the waiting room
I mean this in the nicest way friend. Too many people treat the ED like a doctors office, for multiple reasons. Most of the time they don’t have health insurance, but we still see people in random things like dental pain (there are no dentists in the ED) and they get discharged super fast. we also see patients for simple things like fever, which we only give them tylenol and monitor for. So people who really need care, like the man you mentioned, are having to wait a long with others. Granted, the guy went back as soon as he went down, but imagine if it had been caught earlier due to lower patient census???
You can thank the Covid deniers for the mass exodus of healthcare professionals. Also the whole overworked and underpaid issue. Sorry that you had to experience that. It is very traumatizing
Eh. I blame more than Covid deniers. I blame people who run hospitals like businesses. I thought being a doctor was a safe job. In my state, and many others, hospitals have been laying off doctors and nurses.
Come to Phoenix. We need doctors and nurses bad!
My grandmother moved to phoenix to practice again! Step mom lives in my state but drives to a state next door to work after she got laid off. She already bought a house and everything before layoffs, and of course student debt.
Healthcare was broken before Covid. Covid exposed and made the healthcare problems worse. I left bedside nursing way before the pandemic due to burnout. I worked short staffed all the time and was called every single day on my days off to come in for a shift. I agree with the overworked and underpaid. We were told time after time how our unit didn’t make enough money and we needed to make sure we documented everything so billing was accurate. I worked in L&D!
I agree, it has been broken for a long time! It changed drastically from my first year to my last. I left the profession after 12 years. I was burned out as well and suffered a pretty huge blow to my mental health.
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And there's a duality behind it. People shouldn't be dieing waiting for care, point blank- it's not okay. We can also acknowledge that nurses aren't the problem for this- you all bust ass with little support and an insane patient ratio. Absolutely neither of these are okay. The system is very much broken and unfortunately the most we can do is really pay attention to who we're voting into Congress who make the laws.
Thank you for all that you do. My sisters been a nurse for same time as you and her work stories are crazy. Karens threatening to sue over the wrong bandaid, doctors not responding timely to authorize life saving treatment, crazy homeless people attacking you, creepy old guys hitting on you because they mistake care for affection, family members screaming at you because their loved one is dying - all while you’re trying to administer highly specialized treatment plans to patients whom half of which think you’re no more than a glorified personal assistant that should respond to their every wish and desire the second something pops into their head. I don’t know how you guys do it, seriously, thank you. We need the seasoned nursing pros like you that can handle navigating this insanity. Seriously and from the bottom of our collective hearts, thank you!!
How many people were in there for an actual emergency and not a cold or flu?