Thread: Public hospital system..A real eye opener

What ammused me when at the ED, were the amount of halfwits and their partners or children with wounds or sniffles that could have been fixed at home with a bandaid or panadol a complete waste of time and resoarces.

Aaahhh you cut your widdle finger, **** off home and put a bloody bandaid on it

Baz.

A few years ago I was taken from work to the local public hospital (Parramatta) with a kidney stone attack. I was doubled over in severe pain. Took well over an hour to see a Dr, and by that time the spasm had passed so he sent me back to work

Hi Ean,

Good to hear nothing too serious, yeah I remember from a couple of visits back when we lived in Darwin (late 80's early 90's), it was a real eye opener just what the staff have to put up with. Even now (last visit was a few years ago here in Perth) nothing much has changed and you are bang on Redback, no "home remedy" skills like Mum and Grandma have are used in todays society, just go to the hospital ED.

Cheers,

Peter.

Chest pains, always mention pressure... shortness of breath.... sore neck and a general feeling of impending doom.

May have nothing to do with your broken ankle...but it puts you up the queue like nothing else does !

Can only agree... after seeing most of the "clients" at our local public hospital, I will have no shame about playing the above trick if/when needs be. - Got instant service when I had genuine cardiac problems...

Yes, Nurses are worth their weight in Gold.

Something should be done about the "Emergency", or as it should, in many many instances be called, the "I'll come here, 'cause if I go to the Docter I'll have to pay" Dept.
But nothing is done about culling the people "using" the system, nor is there any REAL punishment for those, as a previous poster said, who abuse hard working & dedicated medical professionals.
Cheers, Pickles.

Sounds like a normal day to me!

Both sides of a brawl in beds next to each other, who then want to continue the fight in the ED.

Drug dealers running business from their trolley.

3am Friday night specials. - Blood, booze and vomit!

What gets me is the Eastern Suburbs mothers who demand to be seen immediately irrespective of the condition of their child because it's an emergency -> she has a dinner party tonight and the guests are due to arrive any moment!

Then the others who demand to be given a government paid taxi ride home because its the sabbath and they can't do the work of opening their wallet to pay the fare!

I could go on and on ... ad infinitum ....!

Originally Posted by Pickles2

Something should be done about the "Emergency", or as it should, in many many instances be called, the "I'll come here, 'cause if I go to the Docter I'll have to pay" Dept.
But nothing is done about culling the people "using" the system, nor is there any REAL punishment for those, as a previous poster said, who abuse hard working & dedicated medical professionals.
Cheers, Pickles.

You forgot to mention the red and white free taxi co. they used to get to the ED. (the one with red and blue flashing lights and a siren)

As for making them go to the GP, we can't they are citizens and entitled to use the ED under Medicare, the most that can be done is to give them the appropriate triage score and make them wait until their turn in the cat 5 queue comes up. (Most ED waiting rooms actually have 3 different priority queues operating simultaneously, each queue moving at different rates. Funding is based upon benchmarking of time from presentation to being seen by the Doc for each of the 5 different triage categories)

BTW: the ones who arrived in custody (above), would likely not be seen any quicker than any other person presenting. Just that they would have been housed in a secure area of the department. Highly likely for EDs in close proximity to prisons and detention centres.

my father inlaw presented with mild chest pain or might have been after having chest pain and was placed in a que. he was concerned that it might get worse.....

he made himself fall out of his chair onto the floor, he was instantly seen to and turns out he had had a mild heart attack and needed a stint put in

by no means was he blaming the nurses, from the sounds of it they were under the pump dealing with all sorts presenting......

on a side note he works in the medical industry (servicing hospital equipment) and advise us if you think you have something serious or you are getting worse than lay on the floor. i am not saying i agree with this method of jumping the que just handy to know

Originally Posted by weeds

my father inlaw presented with mild chest pain or might have been after having chest pain and was placed in a que. he was concerned that it might get worse.....

he made himself fall out of his chair onto the floor, he was instantly seen to and turns out he had had a mild heart attack and needed a stint put in

by no means was he blaming the nurses, from the sounds of it they were under the pump dealing with all sorts presenting......on a side note he works in the medical industry (servicing hospital equipment) and advise us if you think you have something serious or you are getting worse than lay on the floor

Not in my ED you won't, yes you'll get reassessed, but triage nurses are quite expert in assessing true from fake.

Then we have the person who saw the ambulance cases going straight in, so rang an ambulance to the front door, ambulance control rang us up to querie the call. Or the person who was cat 5, going home (close by) and calling the ambulance, arrived back at triage now with an ambulance bill and being given the same Cat 5 and sent back to the waiting room. Their previous place in the queue having lapsed when they left the ED.