The right to the emergency room ?

Before we begin, let’s be clear: no, there is no right and no, we are not mere officials in an administration where you are called by numbers in order of arrival.

For this case, I am at the reception in the emergency department and I am faced with a mom who takes his 9 year old daughter for a sprained ankle. Installed in the box, she attacks me gently to the front, wondering why the young man (14 years old) with the arm in a sling, happened before his daughter. Hum ? I’m not aware of, I want to be friendly. I look at the reasons home, explaining that it takes people by degree of severity, and not by order of arrival. Follow his hand, mumbling (it is true it is less loose, arf), as it is no matter what, and that his daughter is still young ! Um, this also does not play necessarily, madam. She shouted to me that it was abnormal to see the rights as to the emergency… I tried to tell him that he was not there, she had the air of being better informed than me ! Amazing for a person who does not work in the middle, who consults for the 1st time in the emergency room, but that lets you say this as if she knew everything better than everyone, even us.

After you have looked quickly on my computer, I concede all the same, a fact going in his direction : he and his daughter have the same degree of urgency. Therefore, it was not necessarily a priority of course. I look at the time of arrival, there is only a 2-minute gap between the two records… Good because it is a râleuse, I tell him that indeed his daughter was recorded TWO minutes before. But as to the cashier of the supermarket, it is she who has to have reason.

And then there, I understand why my colleague IOA took the boy before. Because myself I had already on hand the record of the girl, so she has not seen him when she wanted to call the next patient ! Before you install the young patient, I had taken the transmissions of the firefighters who brought a grandpa in respiratory discomfort. Where the two-minute gap… And two minutes after I called this girl to see it. But the mother has not seen him as well, and in spite of these explanations (that I have taken the time to provide so that after all I could not to say anything and take care of her daughter instead of wasting even more time…), she didn’t listened and turned his head looking at the wall, as do the teenage girls who are abused by their mother. Anyway, I stopped the discussion and brought his daughter to the pediatric emergencies.

Once again, I am in my wrong according to the patients, and to have lost 2 minutes for it to the emergency room it is too.