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Wednesday, September 17, 2008 3:19 am
Emergency Rooms.
From this:
To what you see above. It got photoshopped. I don't know if I spoiled the picture by adding the fake colourful flowers, but who really cares? I like the hanging moss/ferns/vines thingies on the brick background though.
On to another topic, being a nurse is hard. It's really, really difficult. Especially when you work in ERs. I don't know about other countries, but in Singapore, people of all ages, suffering from all kinds of illness (from slight fever of one day to breathing difficulty to fatal road traffic accidents) WILL, and I repeat, WILL, at some point in their lives, visit the ERs. And when I say ER, I mean Emergency Room. It is meant for EMERGENCIES, life threatening, fatal cases that needs prompt treatment. If you have major injuries and medical problems that would lead you to a grave, by all means, we welcome you to the ER.
Those with cough of one day, fever of two days, abdominal pain for less than a day can easily be treated in GPs or polyclinics. There are plenty around in Singapore. But no. Most of the cases we see in the ER are these people.
And if you don't know how the workflow is like in the ERs, please, cease your complaining. In the ERs, we attend to the cases that are more urgent, more critical first. That means, should a 10-year-old boy be rushed in by an ambulance, sustaining a major head injury and several fatal fractures in the body 1 HOUR or 2 HOURS after YOU came, and you're still waiting to see the doctor, we will see to the boy first. Thus, you have to wait longer.
So with all these non-emergency cases constantly coming in, when there's an emergency, or at least a more serious case, you non-emergency cases (Cat 3) are pushed back. Although there are doctors meant to see these Cat 3 cases, some or all of them might have to do procedures on their patients, or they might need to review their other patients, or wait for the senior doctor to discuss the cases with. Can you see how the waiting time gets longer? You might as well go to GPs and polyclinics and wait for the same time cheaper.
Of course, I won't mind if these non-emergency cases comes in. Just as long as they don't come up to our nurses' station and give us a verbal abuse, I'm fine. We're fine. But that hardly ever happens. Never a day where there's more than 20 people on the queue to see a doctor goes by that we wouldn't suffer from some kind of verbal abuse. And you can't even imagine the sort of abuse we get. One of the patients actually said "F*** you" or "You're stupid" to colleagues of mine. And from what I read in the newspapers, some patients even threatened the nurses saying "Watch out if I see you outside".
They come in with their black faces and demand to know when they'll be attended to. When we explain to them the reasons why the waiting time is so long or tell them how many more patients to go before their turn, they give this "TSK!" noises and a huge frustrated sigh and shoot daggers and knives at us with their eyes and mouth.
Sometimes they come in again and ask again. When they're not happy with our reply, they'll say "I WANT TO SEE THE DOCTOR NOW!". Like what in the world can WE do? It's the doctors that are seeing the patients. They're the ones calling the patients. We don't have much power to force the doctors to see you right away unless your child/relative takes a turn for the worse. Why don't you just barge into the doctors' room yourselves?
Of course, we try as much as we can to calm you down, communicate with you with the best possible service that we have. Give you the service from the heart. There was actually a course "Service from the Heart" for us. Frankly, most of us find it B*******. Most of the things we learn there is not really in the context of the ERs. So anyway, what we learned, is mostly to apologize first. Which sucked because we're not doing anything wrong. But we say it anyway, to show how humble we are, hoping you'll calm down. But no. Some would reply "Sorry, sorry for what?! Sorry can't do anything for me!" And then we tell them all the reasons we can possibly find with as much sugar-coated voice as we can possibly do without cringing and try our hardest not to yell at them when they demand and scream at us again and again.
Sure, maybe some of you reading this think that maybe we should use a stern voice and clean words that would eventually, to them sound like bad words. Put them in their place. Don't let them walk all over us. Like what you see on TV. TV sure can be rubbish sometimes. I don't want to get sacked, nor do I want to get a bruised eye or a broken nose should I accidentally provoke them with my tone of voice and reasonable reasons.
I'm just saying that angry patients/parents have selective hearing. They don't want to listen and take in the fact.
After all the commotion, they'll stomp out and continue waiting with burning hearts. When the doctors finally call them in, that's when most of us nurses hate it. Not because we're afraid they might yell at the doctors too, more of the opposite. Most patients will sit there, smiling sweetly, listening attentively, talking politely and say how professional they are, how competent they are. AGH!!! Just because we're nurses that help clean up your butt and serve you medications and give you the treatments and education you deserve and get pathetic salaries, you think you can give us an attitude? Like Jaime said, nurses are doctors at heart (after several years of experience of course), we just don't have the certificate. The worst thing is that it's not our fault! Maybe it's not the doctor's fault either. It could be your own fault because you come in to the ER when you don't have an E anywhere on you and build up the waiting time.
I like taking care of people, see them get the treatment they need to get better. But I hate how sometimes the 'slave' is more than the 'nurse'.
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