Hallway Patients

[Kate Ovington]

>From personal experience, I was left in the waiting room at Newton-Wellsley Hospital in Boston after arriving by ambulance.  I was triaged 2x and finally admitted to the ED with acute appendicitis after 2 hours in the waiting room.  The EMS crew did not stay with me.  I guess I didn't look or act sick enough.

Kate
BA, EMT-I
Camden, ME

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ben Addleman<mailto:ben.addleman at gmail.com> 
  To: Trauma &amp, Critical Care mailing list<mailto:trauma-list at trauma.org> 
  Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 3:16 PM
  Subject: Re: Hallway Patients


  Re moving admitted patients to ward hallways instead of ER hallways:
  I think this is a great idea, though I would also suggest that EMS should be
  permitted to leave stable patients in the ER waiting room rather than having
  to remain with them until an ER bed is available for them, as is the current
  situation. We recently had 2 operative ambulances serving a city of one
  million people, as every single other EMS crew was sitting in ER waiting to
  transfer their patients, and the ER was full of admitted patients waiting to
  go to the floor (and the wards were full of people waiting for placement,
  and the beat goes on...)
  --
  trauma-list : TRAUMA.ORG
  To change your settings or unsubscribe visit:
  http://www.trauma.org/index.php?/community/<http://www.trauma.org/index.php?/community/>