Woes of working in an ED

You walk into the casualty with an air of superiority. You aren't my senior at work nor do I owe you a favour. Yet you believe that I should suspend whatever it  is that I  am doing to listen to your words, which I can already guess with utmost certainity.

I make a mental note to ignore you and continue talking to my patient's relative, who has finally accepted that his unconscious brother, is a heavy alcoholic ( 5 minutes ago he had claimed that he was a  teetotaller) , but you keep walking towards me and soon position yourself precariously close enough to listen to what the ailing patient's relative is telling me.

With privacy and decency taking a hit, you force me to acknowledge your presence. 

I just decide to smile this time and continue talking as frowning didn't work last week. 

Asking you to wait was even worse for you decided to sit down next to the patient a few days ago.

And on another occasion you demanded that I listen to you.

Naturally ,the smile didn't work either and I am once again forced to listen to the most irritating statement a doctor could ever come across at work. 

" My relative. He wants to see a doctor. He thinks he has diabetes. Can you see him."

Pause

" Can you see him immediately"

Pause

" Only for 5 minutes sir" 

And the alleged relative is seen trodding behind him approaching my desk indicating an equal  lack of dignity and commonsense.

I ask him to wait. 

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How many of you have done this? 

How many of you are okay waiting until it's your turn?

How many of you call in favours for even the simplest of things?

" I have some work at the bank. Do you know someone there?" 

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What makes you think that you need preferance over someone else? 

Is it because your think only your day is busy?

Is it because your ideas are changing the world and waiting for 20 minutes is a collosal waste of time?

Is it because you are used to things happening immediately for you?

Or is it just because you have just don't give a crap about anyone else. 

Either way, when you come to a hospital and especially to a casualty/emergency department, I don't give a damn why you think you need to be seen first. 

We as healthcare workers, who work in an emergency department choose not to bother ourselves with the knowledge of the ' powerful' people our patients claim to know.

(Once a guy told me that he knows the health minister but funnily got his name wrong)

Probably in an OPD visit in a fantasy land far far away, where time is plentiful and people are scarce, you can draw your family tree and explain the necessary details.

But not in an emergency department.

Not when people are acutely ill and time is of the essense.

Your social visit to a doctor does not necessitate a visit to an emergency department. Your need to refill medicines does not precede over someone who has a broken bone, a bleeding scalp or is delirious. 

You will be seen based on the degree and magnitude of what you present with and not on your time of arrival or the battalion of people who come with you. 

The patient who walks in the last might have the more emergent problem and will be seen first. Your general heath check up can wait when someone else has a heart that is failing.

So when you walk in to ask/demand/threathen a doctor  to see someone you know, think twice.

If you are incapable of the latter, give the benefit of doubt to the hospital and wait your turn.

Also, learn to read into our frowns and smiles.

Cheers.