6 ms·

Dude go to a hospital in a populated area during this surge. My wife sat in the waiting room for 3 hours with SEVERE abdominal pain, DURING A PREGNANCY and was

by sib301 5y ago

Dude go to a hospital in a populated area during this surge. My wife sat in the waiting room for 3 hours with SEVERE abdominal pain, DURING A PREGNANCY and was unable to be seen. We went home. If she’d had an ectopic pregnancy, she would probably not be here anymore.

lowercased 5y ago
My mom had to wait for ~ 5 hrs in ER waiting room in relatively severe pain. Was another 8-9 hours 'inside' just to be sent home. Years ago she'd had been admitted and stayed overnight to be on the safe side (older adult, known health issues, etc) but ... no room, over capacity, stretched way too thin.
Lammy 5y ago
To be fair I had exactly that same experience at the UCSF Emergency Room in 2017. Four hours in the waiting room, and then the only bed they could give me was against one wall of a busy hallway.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Yes its very common even in richest places. Case point #2 - Geneva, Switzerland has the biggest public hospital in whole country (HUG). They employ around 10k personnel overall, and Geneva is relatively small city (they call it the smallest metropole for a reason). There is no shortage of money or high tech equipment. But if you came pre-covid during say weekend night and you were not clearly about to die, 10+h waiting time in emergency was not unheard of (wife was serving there for some time as doctor, those folks deserve some proper respect). Simply overwhelmed, not enough staff comprised mostly by junior doctors. Now they are properly good in diagnosing whether your excruciating pain is life-threatening or not, but it must suck big time to be on patient's side. This is by far the biggest emergency in whole canton. Any private clinic or smaller medical centre will send serious cases straight there. Its not something discussed frequently but that's just how things are, in one of the richest and well-organized countries in whole world. Don't expect much better experience if you have bad luck with timing.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Well, here in germany it is quite similar. That means, I had to wait only a short time once, but that was after a dog bite to my face and it just looked horrible with blood all over it. But the next time, with an deep open wound in my leg, which was actually way more dangerous, I had to wait quite some time, before they even checked.
    - christophilus 5y ago
      I think I’d read your biography.
- smileysteve 5y ago
  2012 checking in.
- dekhn 5y ago
  this describes many ER visits I've had, ones with my kids and ones I had myself. ERs are the worst possible places to go for medical care, except for near-immediate death. Over time, especially in the US, more and more people use the ER as first-line care (especially on the weekend). Last week, my son had COVID (tested positive) but mild symptoms. At some point he says "I have a blue tongue, I don't remember having that before". Doctor and wife want to rush him to the ER and I say no. My daughter and I debugged it a day later (he had just taken a blue gummy pill, and somehow didn't think to mention that). What would have happened if we went to the ER? Shrugs from the doctor after sitting around the ER at midnight-5AM ("yeah I guess it's not cyanosis and it's gone now"), my wife and I have increased exposure to COVID in the ER, and a $3K bill for looking at a tongue.
skillpass 5y ago
I'm sorry about your experience. I do wish your wife would have received better care, but I'm not sure we can jump to the conclusion that the experience you had implies mandates and restrictions upon society are worthwhile. Do you know that it would have been a shorter wait time during a period where the hospital wasn't overwhelmed? If so, how much shorter? Perhaps the medical staff were able to tell the signs of ectopic pregnancy in a way that allowed them put your wife lower on the triage priority list than you thought she should have been. Does your area have any sort of restrictions? If not, how would the amount of time you had to wait be changed in a world where your area did have restrictions? Even if you can show some benefit from the restrictions, are the benefits great enough to be worthwhile given the costs?
- amluto 5y ago
  Restrictions would likely achieve essentially nothing right now. Reducing R from insane to merely very high might slightly flatten the curve, but not likely enough to make much difference. Restrictions on a level like China are a different story, but that’s not about to happen here. Vaccines are entirely different story. They seem to have little effect on transmission (maybe enough to be useful after three doses but maybe not), but they seem to substantially reduce the number of people who end up hospitalized. So more vaccines would lower the curve, not flatten it. (Take this with a grain of salt. Great data on vaccine efficacy in the US is a bit hard to come by, and I haven’t run the numbers.)
avs733 5y ago
I had an extremely traumatic accident a week ago and came into a major city hospital as a level one trauma patient. I came in with absolutely no wait..ambulance directly to a trauma bay, no waiting, no clothing, no nothing. After about six hours they figure out I was not going to die and was relatively okay. Okay here means two broken legs not “walking around”. Half of the patients at this hospital had covid and I have a five month old at home who isn’t vaccinated (obviously). Once I got admitted to the trauma floor for a couples days it was like I didn’t exist. The staff seemed totally overwhelmed and it took hours to get some simple things like water. Without visitors, a bag of belongings got delivered by being isolated in a chair well out of my limited reach. Took me eight hours to get my laptop from that bag. I was okay with that because I wanted to interact with as few potential covid vectors as possible but wow. I think, from my experience there are a couple of things happening: 1) staff are overwhelmed to day with the ratio of patients to staff. I can’t comment why but the nurses I saw weren’t sitting they were constantly moving. 2) staff are demoralized and frustrated. You could hear it in their voices and tone and body language. They were trying but grumpy. 3) shit rolls down hill. Drs. (Save one angel who talked with me for 30 minutes about life) where in and out for brief profunctory conversations that had no communicative value about what was They need more nurses. And like everywhere else it seems no one is willing to pay them more or treat them better. We can pay execs millions with no qualms and no evidence it works. But as a patient having the worst day of my fucking life, I interact with front line staff and they are out there getting run into the ground and being treated like shit for it. I’m so sorry for your wife, I was so lucky I had a different experience. But the shared thing, I think, is that the American medical system is going through a full and complete collapse and no one with the power to change things is willing to do anything. I’m terrified.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  Is the explanation simply that so many nurses are being forced to isolate with Omicron? Since even vaccinated staff can still spread it, so they still take the tests often, and isolate for 2 weeks if positive.
  - kube-system 5y ago
dont__panic 5y ago
Ugh, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. For other folks reading this: yes, three hours doesn't sound like that long a wait. But I'm willing to be those felt like the three longest, most stressful hours of your life when your mind is racing with possibilities and fears about the future of your wife and/or baby.
- brimble 5y ago
  If it's anything like my Dad's recent trip (I went with him—kids who haven't had to deal with hospitals, always make sure someone else is with you to watch out for you if you have to go in, there is a good chance you'll have a bad time if you don't) the waits are super-long even for people who are obviously in a lot of distress, and they also don't communicate at all about where you are in the triage pool, so you're looking at people who you overheard saying they've already been there three hours when you got there, and they do seem like they need help, and you're like... how fucking long am I going to have to wait? And there's no answer, which I get, but if they could at least tell the ones who definitely aren't getting in "you're low-priority and we have no hope of seeing you today, we're just waiting until you get frustrated and leave" (this was the end result for like 50% of the people in the ER that day, from what I could tell, some of whom really did seem like they needed to get in) exactly that, it'd relieve some stress to know you're not in that group. The lack of communication bordered on abusive, for that reason, and I get they can't give an exact wait time, but at least saying "yes we do actually intend to get you in at some point" would be nice.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Coming from the UK and Italy - 3 hours is nothing. If you're about to die they'll send you to emergency, otherwise you'll have to wait hours. If you're unhappy, pay for a private insurance and get decent service. Actually I had to go to the hospital (not covid) and it was almost deserted with reception coming to check the desk they were supposed to be attending half an hour after we were supposed to be there. People generally went less to the hospital because of the pandemic (which causes other problems).
- cogman10 5y ago
  IDK if it's gotten worse, but circa 2004->2006, my experiences with the NHS were nothing but pleasant. I mostly dealt with northern hospitals and GPs, but it was pretty much in and out. Appointments didn't take long, we were in and out in almost all cases.
- ectopod 5y ago
  Where can you find a private A&E in the UK?
iskander 5y ago
Similar experience in my family, father-in-law spent 18 hours waiting in a ER. Needs a biopsy and imaging which are taking weeks to get done because, as several doctors have admitted, the hospital is both overwhelmed with Covid patients and short-staffed due to infections among doctors and nurses.
mfer 5y ago
I know a lot of nurses and have been following what's happening in hospitals. It's complicated. Here are a couple things I've learned... 1. Many hospitals are under staffed. Schools that produce nurses have stayed steady state while demand has increased. This was before the pandemic. During the pandemic many nurses left due to mandates, being treated poorly (by hospital mgmt and people in the hospital), being overworked during shortages, and more. This has all made staffing a huge problem. When hospitals don't have the staff they close beds down and can't operate at full capacity. Hospitals that used to only hire RNs with bachelor degrees and wouldn't consider an associates (it's the same amount of schooling in the nursing portion) are now trying to hire LPNs. 2. Some emergency rooms are seeing a crazy number of people. More than usual. This is for a variety of reasons. COVID is one but also people putting off having things treated so they are now emergencies is another. Couple this with the staffing shortage and it's even worse.
bko 5y ago
Hospital capacity is a technical problem and can be solved by building more hospitals, hiring more workers or changing the roles to allow nurses to handle more issues. The hospitals are meant to serve people, not the other way around. Covid didn't arrive overnight. If there are capacity issues they should be addressed independent of everything else.
ipaddr 5y ago
3 hours? In the best of times it's an 8 hour wait before covid.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Where has this happened to you? I've been to the ER 6 times in the US and never waited more than 2 hours (pre-covid) in New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York. The time I had to wait 2 hours in SF, with a kidney stone was not pleasant, but it was at 3 AM at a hospital that does charity for the homeless, so that was a bit exceptional.
umvi 5y ago
Busy ERs are not unique to covid. I've had many experiences with multi-hour ER waits pre-2020

by sib301 5y ago

lowercased 5y ago

My mom had to wait for ~ 5 hrs in ER waiting room in relatively severe pain. Was another 8-9 hours 'inside' just to be sent home. Years ago she'd had been admitted and stayed overnight to be on the safe side (older adult, known health issues, etc) but ... no room, over capacity, stretched way too thin.

Lammy 5y ago

To be fair I had exactly that same experience at the UCSF Emergency Room in 2017. Four hours in the waiting room, and then the only bed they could give me was against one wall of a busy hallway.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Yes its very common even in richest places. Case point #2 - Geneva, Switzerland has the biggest public hospital in whole country (HUG). They employ around 10k personnel overall, and Geneva is relatively small city (they call it the smallest metropole for a reason). There is no shortage of money or high tech equipment. But if you came pre-covid during say weekend night and you were not clearly about to die, 10+h waiting time in emergency was not unheard of (wife was serving there for some time as doctor, those folks deserve some proper respect). Simply overwhelmed, not enough staff comprised mostly by junior doctors. Now they are properly good in diagnosing whether your excruciating pain is life-threatening or not, but it must suck big time to be on patient's side. This is by far the biggest emergency in whole canton. Any private clinic or smaller medical centre will send serious cases straight there. Its not something discussed frequently but that's just how things are, in one of the richest and well-organized countries in whole world. Don't expect much better experience if you have bad luck with timing.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Well, here in germany it is quite similar. That means, I had to wait only a short time once, but that was after a dog bite to my face and it just looked horrible with blood all over it. But the next time, with an deep open wound in my leg, which was actually way more dangerous, I had to wait quite some time, before they even checked.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    I think I’d read your biography.
smileysteve 5y ago
2012 checking in.
dekhn 5y ago
this describes many ER visits I've had, ones with my kids and ones I had myself. ERs are the worst possible places to go for medical care, except for near-immediate death. Over time, especially in the US, more and more people use the ER as first-line care (especially on the weekend). Last week, my son had COVID (tested positive) but mild symptoms. At some point he says "I have a blue tongue, I don't remember having that before". Doctor and wife want to rush him to the ER and I say no. My daughter and I debugged it a day later (he had just taken a blue gummy pill, and somehow didn't think to mention that). What would have happened if we went to the ER? Shrugs from the doctor after sitting around the ER at midnight-5AM ("yeah I guess it's not cyanosis and it's gone now"), my wife and I have increased exposure to COVID in the ER, and a $3K bill for looking at a tongue.

skillpass 5y ago

I'm sorry about your experience. I do wish your wife would have received better care, but I'm not sure we can jump to the conclusion that the experience you had implies mandates and restrictions upon society are worthwhile. Do you know that it would have been a shorter wait time during a period where the hospital wasn't overwhelmed? If so, how much shorter? Perhaps the medical staff were able to tell the signs of ectopic pregnancy in a way that allowed them put your wife lower on the triage priority list than you thought she should have been. Does your area have any sort of restrictions? If not, how would the amount of time you had to wait be changed in a world where your area did have restrictions? Even if you can show some benefit from the restrictions, are the benefits great enough to be worthwhile given the costs?

amluto 5y ago
Restrictions would likely achieve essentially nothing right now. Reducing R from insane to merely very high might slightly flatten the curve, but not likely enough to make much difference. Restrictions on a level like China are a different story, but that’s not about to happen here. Vaccines are entirely different story. They seem to have little effect on transmission (maybe enough to be useful after three doses but maybe not), but they seem to substantially reduce the number of people who end up hospitalized. So more vaccines would lower the curve, not flatten it. (Take this with a grain of salt. Great data on vaccine efficacy in the US is a bit hard to come by, and I haven’t run the numbers.)

avs733 5y ago

I had an extremely traumatic accident a week ago and came into a major city hospital as a level one trauma patient. I came in with absolutely no wait..ambulance directly to a trauma bay, no waiting, no clothing, no nothing. After about six hours they figure out I was not going to die and was relatively okay. Okay here means two broken legs not “walking around”. Half of the patients at this hospital had covid and I have a five month old at home who isn’t vaccinated (obviously). Once I got admitted to the trauma floor for a couples days it was like I didn’t exist. The staff seemed totally overwhelmed and it took hours to get some simple things like water. Without visitors, a bag of belongings got delivered by being isolated in a chair well out of my limited reach. Took me eight hours to get my laptop from that bag. I was okay with that because I wanted to interact with as few potential covid vectors as possible but wow. I think, from my experience there are a couple of things happening: 1) staff are overwhelmed to day with the ratio of patients to staff. I can’t comment why but the nurses I saw weren’t sitting they were constantly moving. 2) staff are demoralized and frustrated. You could hear it in their voices and tone and body language. They were trying but grumpy. 3) shit rolls down hill. Drs. (Save one angel who talked with me for 30 minutes about life) where in and out for brief profunctory conversations that had no communicative value about what was They need more nurses. And like everywhere else it seems no one is willing to pay them more or treat them better. We can pay execs millions with no qualms and no evidence it works. But as a patient having the worst day of my fucking life, I interact with front line staff and they are out there getting run into the ground and being treated like shit for it. I’m so sorry for your wife, I was so lucky I had a different experience. But the shared thing, I think, is that the American medical system is going through a full and complete collapse and no one with the power to change things is willing to do anything. I’m terrified.

irthomasthomas 5y ago
Is the explanation simply that so many nurses are being forced to isolate with Omicron? Since even vaccinated staff can still spread it, so they still take the tests often, and isolate for 2 weeks if positive.
- kube-system 5y ago

dont__panic 5y ago

Ugh, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. For other folks reading this: yes, three hours doesn't sound like that long a wait. But I'm willing to be those felt like the three longest, most stressful hours of your life when your mind is racing with possibilities and fears about the future of your wife and/or baby.

brimble 5y ago
If it's anything like my Dad's recent trip (I went with him—kids who haven't had to deal with hospitals, always make sure someone else is with you to watch out for you if you have to go in, there is a good chance you'll have a bad time if you don't) the waits are super-long even for people who are obviously in a lot of distress, and they also don't communicate at all about where you are in the triage pool, so you're looking at people who you overheard saying they've already been there three hours when you got there, and they do seem like they need help, and you're like... how fucking long am I going to have to wait? And there's no answer, which I get, but if they could at least tell the ones who definitely aren't getting in "you're low-priority and we have no hope of seeing you today, we're just waiting until you get frustrated and leave" (this was the end result for like 50% of the people in the ER that day, from what I could tell, some of whom really did seem like they needed to get in) exactly that, it'd relieve some stress to know you're not in that group. The lack of communication bordered on abusive, for that reason, and I get they can't give an exact wait time, but at least saying "yes we do actually intend to get you in at some point" would be nice.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Coming from the UK and Italy - 3 hours is nothing. If you're about to die they'll send you to emergency, otherwise you'll have to wait hours. If you're unhappy, pay for a private insurance and get decent service. Actually I had to go to the hospital (not covid) and it was almost deserted with reception coming to check the desk they were supposed to be attending half an hour after we were supposed to be there. People generally went less to the hospital because of the pandemic (which causes other problems).

cogman10 5y ago
IDK if it's gotten worse, but circa 2004->2006, my experiences with the NHS were nothing but pleasant. I mostly dealt with northern hospitals and GPs, but it was pretty much in and out. Appointments didn't take long, we were in and out in almost all cases.
ectopod 5y ago
Where can you find a private A&E in the UK?

iskander 5y ago

Similar experience in my family, father-in-law spent 18 hours waiting in a ER. Needs a biopsy and imaging which are taking weeks to get done because, as several doctors have admitted, the hospital is both overwhelmed with Covid patients and short-staffed due to infections among doctors and nurses.

mfer 5y ago

I know a lot of nurses and have been following what's happening in hospitals. It's complicated. Here are a couple things I've learned... 1. Many hospitals are under staffed. Schools that produce nurses have stayed steady state while demand has increased. This was before the pandemic. During the pandemic many nurses left due to mandates, being treated poorly (by hospital mgmt and people in the hospital), being overworked during shortages, and more. This has all made staffing a huge problem. When hospitals don't have the staff they close beds down and can't operate at full capacity. Hospitals that used to only hire RNs with bachelor degrees and wouldn't consider an associates (it's the same amount of schooling in the nursing portion) are now trying to hire LPNs. 2. Some emergency rooms are seeing a crazy number of people. More than usual. This is for a variety of reasons. COVID is one but also people putting off having things treated so they are now emergencies is another. Couple this with the staffing shortage and it's even worse.

bko 5y ago

Hospital capacity is a technical problem and can be solved by building more hospitals, hiring more workers or changing the roles to allow nurses to handle more issues. The hospitals are meant to serve people, not the other way around. Covid didn't arrive overnight. If there are capacity issues they should be addressed independent of everything else.

ipaddr 5y ago

3 hours? In the best of times it's an 8 hour wait before covid.

ryan_lane 5y ago
Where has this happened to you? I've been to the ER 6 times in the US and never waited more than 2 hours (pre-covid) in New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York. The time I had to wait 2 hours in SF, with a kidney stone was not pleasant, but it was at 3 AM at a hospital that does charity for the homeless, so that was a bit exceptional.

umvi 5y ago

Busy ERs are not unique to covid. I've had many experiences with multi-hour ER waits pre-2020