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How To Make The Hospital Emergency Room Wait More BearableHow To Make The Hospital Emergency Room Wait More Bearableby Garnet , January 13, 2006
The good news: California is said to have some of the best hospital emergency rooms in the nation.
The bad news: After listening to a program of horror stories about California emergency rooms, one wonders how truly bad the other states must be.
The program discussed how the triage system works, and why you might sit there forever with a broken arm while infants with 105 fevers, and people with brain bleeds, go before you. Of course they need to have the most serious cases be seen first. Unfortunately if you are in pain, but you're not bleeding all over the place or having breathing problems, you might have to sit for quite a while on a busy day.
One person suggested all emergency rooms should have a nurse to give out pain killers, even before people get to see the doctor. But that probably wont work since some doctors say "Pain is diagnostic". (I'll never forget one dentist who said that to me repeatedly as he tortured me, but actually he had some good justification.) The other problem is all the people who would be lining up around the outside of the building just to get in to get free pain meds. Unfortunately, the doctors probably need to be the ones to make the decisions on giving out pain medicines to avoid compromising the later examination.
One guy called in to tell how a friend went to the hospital with severe chest pains, but was forced to sit in the emergency room waiting room for what seemed like forever. So he got out in his car, drove a couple of blocks away, then called 911 with a report of chest pains. The ambulance came and transported him back to the hospital, and ambulance drivers whisked him in another door, straight into the ER and to a doctor, past all the other people he had been previously waiting behind.
But almost everyone complains about feeling like they've fallen through the cracks at the emergency room. "Have they forgetten I'm here?" You lay there, and lay there, and lay there, not knowing if they remember you are there. I'm a patient guy, I take a book with me, but on a recent emergency room visit for dehydration, even I began wondering if I was being too patient, it seemed like I was getting too much of the book finished. If only the bright lights didn't keep me from taking a nap....
Someone suggested that they have a screen in each room showing you the list of people who had been triaged before you. "Oh, an infant with a 105 fever, Bill with a brain bleed, Joe with a cut off finger, well of course, they should go before my broken arm, it's practically an honor to let them go first." But then as you sit there waiting, you think they are just about to come see you, then you see someone come up on the board ahead of you with two broken arms, "Doh!" Of course with privacy laws, the hospital can't get away with sharing medical information like that.
But I have an idea to make the wait much more bearable and interesting.
We've all seen the Reality TV Shows that have film crews tailing ambulances into emergency rooms. Those apparently don't create any privacy problems.
So why not have a special hospital-private reality TV show channel in every hospital emergency room, letting you watch the drama unfolding around you in real time?
A single very busy guy, with a Dan Rather safari jacket and a wifi connected wireless camera, who could shadow (follow) the doctors into rooms as they evaluate patients, and perform procedures. You could watch the channel and see what is happening outside your room, and see how serious everyone else is. You might even be so entertained you forget your own problems. In the lull times, a series of "While you wait" public services announcements could play. Perhaps even "Best of" segments from the past week to provide more action. Think of the captive audience, the hospitals might even be able to sell advertising on the channel. "More doctors prefer Pregnot...."
But of course the camera guy would be able to dramatically cut into those segments if omething interesting was suddenly happening at the hospital. Imagine the camera guy being paged that an ambulance just arrived, or a woman in labor just arrived, you can watch as he goes racing out to video them. Done right, the most sleepy emergency room could seem on the channel to be a bustle of activity. It would be so entertaining, you might forget why you are there.
Of course the line around the building of people trying to get in so they can appear on "Survivor, The City Hospital Channel" could be a problem. And, I suppose the hospital might not want to call it the "Survivor Emergency Room" channel, might not be a good marketing move.
Inspired by the Armstrong And Getty Show on [KNEW 910]...
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