Emergency Rooms

In the past two weeks, I've taken two people to the emergency room. Thankfully, both were released with not-too-serious maladies. But, I spent a lot of time sitting around, my stomach twisted with worry. There isn't much to do in an emergency waiting room, so my curiosities kick in and I go into what I like to call my hyper-observation mode.

My two visits were to two different hospitals, with very different methods and facilities. Here in San Diego, we have a couple major healthcare systems. I think Kaiser probably has the largest amount of people, and that's the one I was in for my first visit.

It. Was. CROWDED. We were there at 8:00 on a Friday night. There weren't very many chairs available, though there were a lot of chairs. It was a rather large room, sort of divided into sections. The chairs were okay, but not very comfortable. Certainly not meant to be sat in for hours.

They had an immediate triage nurse that those checking in waited about 10 minutes for, which was good for the patients, but then they had people who had just been triaged stand in line for about 45 minutes to get checked all the way into the process. Every person in that line looked miserable.

We were able to leave the emergency room around 1:30 am. I sat in that chair for about 5 1/2 hours.

Then last night, I visited another of the major hospitals in San Diego, Sharp Memorial. We arrived at the emergency room around 1:00 am. It's a smaller ER than the one at Kaiser. the two waiting areas are separated by the check-in/security/triage areas. An RN checked patients in, determining who needed immediate triage. Rather than performing triage in the waiting room, the patients were brought into triage rooms. All people who went to a triage room, went back to their ER rooms. Not sure if that's just how it works, or if everyone was serious enough to warrant going straight back.

The waiting area at Sharp was a stark contrast from Kaiser. It was decorated well, and the chairs were really comfortable. It didn't feel like a hospital. We were able to leave by 3:15 am. So, I sat in this chair for only about 2 1/4 hours.

I don't know if the time I was there was a factor, but the Sharp experience was definitely better and we left in much better spirits, than I did with Kaiser, despite the fact that it was quite a bit later (well, earlier in the morning).  Despite the waiting room critiques, I definitely want to give thanks to all the wonderful medical professionals that helped my people. Oh, and a special shout-out to the Walgreens Pharmacy Drive-Through that provided us with the prescribed medication at 3:30 am!

BEDA Tracker:

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