ER Doctors and Nurses are either really good or they're not. They're either new (read "enthusiastic") or well seasoned (read "exhausted"). They should either be in the medical field or in the back room of a Museum Library having nothing to do with the public at large. I have experienced both ends of the spectrum.
My Doctor stats in the ER are impressive, or depressing, dependent on your perspective. There is one ER doctor I've seen three times, one I've seen twice, a few one-timers and then there are the various technicians, aides, nurses. The Doctor I've seen three times is AMAZING! Good communicator, doesn't dally, does what he can and hands off everything else. He's like a good quarterback - in the limited time he has to work, there's only so much he can do. The rest is up to specialists similar to that of receivers, running backs and the like. The key is making a smooth handoff to the right person.
On a relatively recent visit, which happened to be the second of two visits to the same ER in a three day period, the handoff went to a specialist who should have been paying me.
At the time the Doctor came in, I had been lying in an exam room for two and a half hours, curled in the fetal position in pain with a temperature of 103 degrees. A situation clearly indicative of a busy night at the ER and people who were much worse off.
My husband and brother were sitting in the room with me and this really great tech was in the process of taking my blood, when the Doctor walked in.
He started asking me questions in a thick foreign accent - something from Eastern Europe, perhaps. This process was not unusual, nor was an accent other than my own. What was unusual was his tendency to ask a question and then, duck out of the room before I could return volley. The initial questioning was, apparently, not worth storing in the recesses of my brain....until his third or fourth return trip to my room....
"You vere at the Emergency Room before?" He asked.
"Yes" I responded, a little puzzled, "I've been here for hours and I'm pretty sure I'm having kidney stone issues".
"No. I mean you vere at the Emergency Room before tonight?"
"OH! Yes!!!" the light broke through the drug induced haze, "I was at the ER Saturday night". Now that I think of it, I had to have been on meds because I sat bolt, upright in anticipation of furthering this productive conversation.
"Vhich facility vas it that you went?"
I sat back, deflated, "Huh?"
"Vhere vas it you vent to the Emergency Room?"
Now I was sitting there, trying desperately to shake the cobwebs from my brain because I knew it was important to talk to this guy. He was going to 'fix' me. I took a guess...
"Here?"
"Yes. Vas here?"
"Yes, was here, Saturday night. You don't have a record of that?"
"Hmm. I'll be right back, I just have to check something" and he slipped out of the room...again.
A few minutes later, he was back, with a couple more questions that got increasingly bizarre until he asked "Vhat is it that you do for vork?"
After putting a hand over one eye, I looked him as square in the eyes as I could, (given the fact that there were at least six of them showing at this point)and said "I sit home all day, watch TV and eat bon bons". My husband and brother both laughed out loud. The Doctor paused, smiled and said "Ah. You are housevife?" At this point, my husband was laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall off his chair.
After giving the Doctor a chance to catch up and realizing he wasn't going to, I lowered my hand, took on all six eyes and said "Computer Systems". All things considered, it was the best I could do. He hesitated for a moment and, spotting a weakness, I went in for the kill and actually asked a question...
In the time it took me to ask "So, what happens now? Will I be here overnight?", he was able to, simultaneously, whirl around, open the door, get half way out of the room and mumble something about "I can't answer all of your questions, I'm sorry" and was gone.
The tech, who was labeling approximately 14 tubes of blood, made a tiny noise that might have been a giggle.
"What?" I asked as I turned my head away from the door, towards her, and closed my mouth.
"We call him dracula". That was all I needed to know and, coincidentally, it's all I remember until I woke up in my hospital room being poked and prodded sometime in the middle of the night by a nurse.
Apparently, I was staying.
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