C H A N G E O F S H I F T
ing off to the coffee shop for my 9-hour shift. After work, I
pick up the kids, buy some groceries, give them their sup-
per and bath, read a few storybooks, say our prayers, and
fall into bed.
sion, which continued even after I left with the publica-
tion of the story about my visit.
I suppose I could feel bitter about this experience, but
rather, I would like to use it as an opportunity to make a
few points to your readers from a patient’s perspective.
First, remember that your patients are human, with
real lives, real feelings, and real problems. A patient is a
mother or a father, a wife or a husband. Every patient is
someone’s son or daughter. A patient is not a room or a
bed or a disease or an organ. In the coffee shop where I
work, if I referred to the hot dog on table 3 or the turkey at
the front station, I would be fired. Even as a waitress, I
respect my customers.
I hear from my doctor customers all about your prob-
lems: COBRA, malpractice, managed care, and all the
rest. But yours is still a profession with power, privilege,
prestige, and a standard of living better than that of 99%
of the world. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. I work
hard too.
And stop being so egocentric. I was the one who spent
3 hours in your ED with my sick son while you were too
busy to attend to me; you were the one who became indig-
nant when I decided to leave.
In the restaurant everyone wants everything now. They
expect service. Sometimes we get incredibly busy, and
sometimes we are short-staffed. In the end, it is not the
customer’s problem. The less angry I get at the customers,
the happier I am. I love my customers.
Finally, look inside yourselves and make sure you are
not getting burned out. This may be the case when the
patients (customers) are perceived as the enemy and they
are making you bitter. (I do not want to be judgmental
either; perhaps it was just a bad night.) Even in my posi-
tion, when I am feeling stressed, I get my mom to watch
the kids, and I try to take some time off. A good long walk
in the woods often helps.
Please, doctors, take this in the vein in which it is
intended—from the perspective of a mother, a waitress, a
customer, and a future patient. I do not exist in a bunker. I
am not the enemy.
On the night in question, the school had called me
because my son had been vomiting and was complaining
of a headache and a tummy ache. When I picked him up, I
noticed that he was running a fever, so I gave him some
Tylenol and sponged him down. The last thing I wanted to
do was go to the ED, but later that evening, his tempera-
ture shot up to 104°F, he complained of a worsening
headache, and he vomited again. I dropped my daughter
off with a neighbor, gave my son another dose of Tylenol,
and headed to the ED. Perhaps the readers should also
know that I previously lost a child to a serious illness, but
I will not go into that.
When I got to the ED, I got the definite feeling that the
triage nurse and the rest of the staff did not think my son
was sick enough to need to be there. I was told that “a
virus” would have to wait for a while, and that was the last
direct communication that I had from anyone. After a
long while, we were put in Bed 3. In Bed 2 there was a
woman moaning with abdominal pain who apparently
was having a gallbladder attack. There were numerous
other patients who we also heard or saw; some appeared
sick and some did not. I thought my son was every bit of
an emergency as the patient with the laceration that was
being sewn up. I was not asking for some kind of long pro-
cedure to be done on my child. All he needed was to be
examined.
Then they put the intoxicated patient (“the drunk”)
into Bed 1. The author was right: the same “thin curtain
that was partially surrounding gurney 3” that allegedly
created a “bunker in the storm,” was hardly an adequate
barrier to shield my young boy from the steady stream of
obscenities coming from the drunken man’s mouth. As I
went to comfort him and cover his ears, I noticed that my
son’s fever had broken. He then looked at me and said he
was feeling better. His headache was gone, and he had not
vomited in the 4 hours since we had left the house. It was
1
1
AM, and I was due to be up again in 4 ⁄
2
hours. My son
With love,
was tired and he missed his bed, so we decided to leave.
How I wished that my husband would have been there to
help me make the decision and to fend for us, but that was
not possible on this cold night. I made the decision and
left, only to be subjected to the scorn of the doctor and
nurses, as was fully described in the article.
The Lady on Bed 3
1. Minadeo JP. A bunker in the storm. Ann Emerg Med. 1999;34:681-682.
As it turns out, my son did only have a virus, but I did
not know that when I brought him in. All I wanted was a
little reassurance, which I never got. I only received deri-
JUNE 2000 35:6 ANNALS OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE
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Hyde
