SooToday received the following letter to the editor from reader Annebell Rousseau in response to a recent visit to the Sault Area Hospital Emergency Department.
As we all know our health care has been going down hill for awhile especially when it comes to our wait times at the hospital. Wait times that we can find out on the expected wait times on the SAH website. Also, we were warned that there may be additional wait times over the holidays.
I attended the SAH ER on Jan. 2, 2025 after arriving I was triaged at 8 pm and not discharged until 12 hours later. But this letter is not to complain about how long I had to wait. It is more or less to bring awareness of how others are behaving while attending the ER.
I truly understand how frustrating having to wait is but, if you have the ability to walk around the ER and raise your voice complaining about how long you have to wait to anyone that may be listening then you have the ability to go to one of the walk-in clinics that are provided throughout the city. Yes, I understand the lack of family doctors that are out there but again that is what one of the walk-in clinics are available for.
Nurses are your first point of contact at the ER, who triage you, take your vitals and usually arranging tests ahead of time, figuring out what patient can go where, answering questions etc. Patients may come through the doors that end up going ahead of you again this may be angering especially when you have already been there for 4 hours but you have absolutely no idea what is going on with that patient. Everyone that gets triaged gets a triage code based off of their symptoms, complaints, and vitals.
Here is a little triage lesson:
- Level 1 is Resuscitation which are conditions that are considered threats to life or limb or have an imminent risk of deterioration requiring immediate aggressive interventions.
- Level 2 Emergent which are conditions that are a potential threat to life, limb or function requiring rapid medical interventions and the use of condition specific controlled medical acts.
- Level 3 Urgent Conditions that could potentially progress to a serious problem requiring emergency interventions.
- Level 4 Less Urgent Many patients with chronic illness without significant acute exacerbation of their illness may fall into this category.
- Level 5 Non-Urgent These are minor complaints that do not pose any immediate risk to the patient.
Not to mention no one knows what is going on behind those ER doors other than the doctors and nurses. Who are working on getting patients diagnosed and treated all the while setting up more tests as required, answering call bells, documenting, maybe dealing with a patient that is coding or someone with severe mental health problems. So yes, a nurse probably knows what is going on that you don’t but that is none of your business.
If you feel that you can do their job better than them go get your education and do it. None of the SAH staff has any control over how fast things happen. Overall, the short of it is all is be respectful to the hospital staff they are human too not robots. Yes, you’re in pain, or sick etc. but that does not give you any reason in the world to treat another human like crap because something isn’t going the way you want. We all need to work together to at least try and keep it going as smoothly as possible. So that being said thank you to all the SAH staff that I had on Jan. 2, 2025 from 8 pm to Jan. 3, 2025 to 8 am when I was discharged.
Annebell Rousseau
Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.