How long usually it takes for a patient to reach a doctor for a treatment at emergency department?
Question by pemanah yang dah lama tak panah: How long usually it takes for a patient to reach a doctor for a treatment at emergency department?
Time taken for a person to reach a doctor at emergency department.
Best answer:
Answer by Pangolin
Depends on the severity of the problem. Might be a minute, might be hours.
If you’re having a heart attack, right away. If you have a runny nose and your “emergency” isn’t very emergent, then you wait until the more seriously ill people are taken care of.
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You might have been a bit more precise in the phrasing of your question.
It isn’t at all unusual for people to put off seeking care for hours, days, or even longer. Once the decision to seek medical attention has been made, it may take widely varying times to reach the emergency department. Imagine a casualty in remote Alaska. And rush hour in major cities can have its own problems.
Once a patient gets to the emergency department, he’s normally triaged within minutes. Those with the most emergent conditions are treated immediately. Those with less urgent problems may have to wait several hours, depending on the availability of doctors and the work load. It isn’t at all rare to have waits as long as eight hours if the problem is minor and the staff overwhelmed, and that’s becoming a more and more common combination. Note that you don’t get a number and have a place in line as you might in a business situation: you can be “bounced” to the back of the line if people with more urgent problems come in after you’ve been there.
Triage is a complicated art in itself, usually with the more experienced nurses in charge of those decisions.
All patients coming into the ER are “triaged,” or categorized as to the threat to their life or health. If two patients come into the ER at the same time, side by side, one with a hangnail, and one with chest pains, which one do you think needs to be seen immediately, and which one can wait? Now, suppose the hangnail patient is about to be seen, and suddenly here comes another chest pain patient? Exactly. So, you can see that “how long to be seen” is a dynamic (moving) number. You will be seen in a “timely” fashion, depending on the severity of your injury or illness. This is why new nurses are not used as triage nurses. The triage nurse is someone who has years of experience in the ER, and he/she knows what he/she is doing. They will ask you what you’re there for, check you quickly to make sure you are (or are not) in imminent danger, and they will ask you to take a seat. You’ll be seen in the order of whatever mix of severity is in the ER at the moment. That’s why some patients come in and are whisked into treatment immediately, while others might have to wait 24 hours. Works that way in every ER in the country. There simply are not enough doctors, nurses or treatment rooms to see everyone as they come in simultaneously.