Took my friend to the emergency room over the week end.

When my son was learning to crawl, he had a couple of bumps when he appeared to forget to move his hands. To that extent, he smacked his forehead on the floor a couple of times. He managed to do it twice in a friends kitchen who had linoleum down. The floor underneath was concrete. He ended up with a huge bump on his head that was obviously tender, and so to be safe, we took him to the emergency room. We were seen first of all by an RN who assesses patients to see how urgent their needs are, she said that she'd feel better if we waited to see a doctor just to be sure because my son was so young. That was at 8.30pm. We were finally seen at 3.30am. Apparently, there were a lot of emergency cases that night, but I was furious at having to wait so long. My son was 9 months old. The nurse had said she'd feel better if we saw a doctor and so we trusted her advice and waited. I was glad I'd had the sense to bring a bottle of milk for my son with us, otherwise, we'd have been in trouble. And when we finally saw the doctor, he felt roughly around the bump and said, take him home and give him some baby paracetamol and he'll be fine. After waiting so long, we were brushed off as though we weren't deserving of his attention.

I've had good and bad experiences but I think that is common. I had to go in because I was having severe pain in my stomach. The first time they had given me pain killers so by the time the doctor came to check me out I had no pain so there wasn't much point being there. The next time I went in for the same thing they thought it was a bladder infection so they injected me with blue dye and it ended up not being the reason. So they sent me home. The next time I went in with another attack the two doctors were arguing about what it could be. One doctor thought gall bladder but the other doctor wouldn't have me xrayed for that because he thought the other doctor was wrong. Well after 2 months of this they finally determined it was infact gall bladder and I was taken in for surgery. Not a great experience.

I haven't had to wait in an emergency room yet, but the situation of the waits here in Ireland is unacceptable. In some parts you'd be lucky to get treated within 3 hours! I could go on with more of the problems like the MRSA crisis, and the dispute with the nurses but I don't want to depress myself! lol

Yes the ER staff work very hard and get paid very little in comparison to what they do. People complain about their services but, would they like to do the job that they do?

I think we all have good and bad emergency room visits. I think the bad visits culminate when you have a situation that can ordinarily be handled in a doctor's office, but it's easier to go to the ER. In the recent past, I had an injury to my toe that was quite painful, but when I called my doctor about it, I was questioned about why I didn't go to the hospital. I explained (several times) that I wasn't going to spend $100 to have a doctor tell me my toe was broken (it was my little toe) but there was nothing s/he could do about it. I mean, really now, I can tape my toe at home. I just called the doctor because the pain was pretty significant and could not be controlled with OTC pain relievers. By the same token, I've had injuries that really should have been seen in an emergency room and I didn't go for one reason or another. Moreover, I've been to the hospital thinking I'd get some kind of treatment and be discharged only to end up being admitted. Most of my visits have been pleasant, or as pleasant as an emergency room visit can be, and I leave feeling better than when I went in. On the whole, I find most visits are a few hours, but I have had a visit here and there that lasted more than 6-8 hours. These are days or evenings that finds the ER busy with traumas, accidents, heart attacks and the like. I'm happy to hear your friend doesn't have a blood clot in her leg, and I'm glad to hear that her visit was as pleasant as it was.

Well for me personally any time I have had to visit the emergency room I was fortunate and never really had to wait because everytime I went it was for thing that could'nt wait. Like the first was when I got blistering hot tar in my eye, then I got a piece of metal in my eye and one other time I had to go for a respitory problem but because these problems where consider priority I never had to wait thank god. My step son needed stitches last year and we sat in the emergancy room for 5 hours before we got him in and stiched. Short story, make sure your careful or god knows how long you'll be sitting in emergancy for wait for help!

The story is too long so I'll just say: Doctor slit my throat from the inside, with a scalpel and NO numming, terrably infected, awfully bad experence! Another time went for some vicodin and antibiotics for a severe toothache, wonderful, the people were kind and sweet, good expirence!

Emergency rooms has often been abused by many thinking whatever it is they're suffering from is all emergency cases which is NOT true. The staff in the emergency clinic will categorise and prioritise patients accordingly. If one guy got shot in the head, would the doctor see to your friend before this poor guy who's on the verge of dying?

very sad to hear this about your friend. things like this can be very frightening.

Last Friday the 9th I (a retired RN) had a stroke in the afternoon and was taken by ambulance to the local ER. As I can remember, the staff were very pleasant in spite of its filled capacity and my going in and out of consciousness. My husband (an LPN) says we were there from 2pm until 530pm because a room was not available after preliminary tests confirmed my stroke. He said everyone there in the ER were careful transferring me to other gurneys and getting my bloodwork and xrays done. The nurses came back often to check on me. I started regaining most of my senses when the call came for me to go upstairs. The staff smiled at me as I thanked them and wavedf goodbye.

I fell at work and it was after hours so the doctors office were closed. I went to the emergency room and my experience was good. They took very good care of me and explained everything in detail. They took a xray of my knee which is what I fell on. I had a torn menesk and they had me schedule a appointment with my family physican the next day. He scheduled me with a specialist and I had surgery. My experience with the emergency room was of the nurses and doctors on duty were very nice and smiled and made sure we were comfortable.

My hospital is Brotman Memorial in Culver City. Late last year, I had terrible stomach pains, that would not subside. I don't know if it was more of the fear of what it was, the pain, or a combination of both, but I called 911. Upon arrival I heard one of the doctors annouce to the E.M.T that they were closed, but that he realized that this did not matter to him. I trust my hospital, but this was strange to me. I sat slumped over in a chair for what seemed like forever waiting for a bed. When they finally did get a bed for me, the doctor examine my stomach and it was so tensed that it was almost like a board. They ran some test and then told me to follow up with my doctor. Since they sent me home so soon, I thought that maybe nothing was that serious and maybe I had over-reacted. I procrastinated in getting to my doctor. He is right across the street from Brotman and I did feel it was necessary to go trudging back over there so soon. I wanted to take it easy for a couple of days. When I called two days later, they said that my doctor had left for vacation the day before and would not be back for two weeks. I figured that if it had been something serious, the emergency room would have kept me longer, gave me medicine or something, so I was content to wait the two weeks. When I finally did see my doctor, he said that they found blood in the stool and it could be any number of things, including cancer. I panicked and my doctor basically reminded me that I had asked what it could be. It turned out that the cervical polyp was not cancerous, but boy, how nerve racking the wait had been. My point is that, I did not understand why the doctor had said that the emergency room was closed when I arrived or why it was so crowded that I had to sit there for so long. Maybe they could tell by looking at me that I was stable enough to wait, but I felt terrible.

Well believe it or not even though you are a RN and take no offense I rather not ever take my kid to the emergency room because even thoug you have those once or two nice ones that will make you feel at home the long wait and everyone else makes me sick