Recently I read an article about how long patients have to wait in the emergency room before receiving care, and it was pretty disturbing. The study said that half of all emergency room patients waited 30 minutes or longer before being seen by a doctor in 2004, which was a 36% increase from the average wait time in 1997. It said that even among patients suffering from heart attcks, half had to wait about 20 minutes or longer to be examined in 2004, which was also up from about 8 minutes in 1997. Also, the study said that for those patients who had serious health problems and needed treatment within 15 minutes were having to wait 14 minutes or longer in 2004, also up from 10 minutes in 1997.
I think that this is really scary. My dad is a doctor, so we have never had to go to the emergency room before. We always just go straight to whatever kind of doctor we need, or if we need like x-rays or something my dad just takes up straight there gets it done. But what am I going to do when I have kids? Am I going to have to wait in the emergency room if something happens to them? Probably, and that makes me really nervous. I never really thought about emergency rooms before, but after hearing this information I wonder how people deal with it. I don’t know what I would do if someone I cared about was hurt and in pain and we were told to just sit and wait. I hope they find some way to fix this problem soon so that people receive better care and feel more confident about going to the emergency room.
Emergency Room Waits Grow
1 comment:
When you say "this" what do you mean? What is the issue here? Why are people having to wait longer? You need to put your observation into some context in order to make a point. You are just complaining: Emergency rooms waits are growing longer. But there are issues here and points to make. Doesn't this topic have to do with political and economic issues? Doesn't this topic have to do with lack of health insurance for many people?
Post a Comment