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“Call It A Stupidity Tax”: ER Staff Share What Patients Make Their Job Harder Than It Already Is
The emergency room is, well, for actual emergencies. If you’re badly hurt or your life is in danger, you must go to the ER. Otherwise, if you’re fine, you shouldn’t tie up doctors’ and nurses’ valuable time when they have serious cases to rush to. It sounds like common sense. But unfortunately, common sense is far too rare.
In a brutally honest online thread, medical professionals shared all of the things that they wish people would stop coming to the ER for. Scroll down for their work experiences, from the serious and heartbreaking to the bizarre.
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#1
To get a pregnancy test. Because they don't want the embarrassment of buying one.
IllNopeMyselfOut:
This is crazy to me. How is having it tested by other people at the ER less embarrassing than buying or especially if you can buy online?
StrangeOne 2 hours ago (edited)
You have to get a pregnancy test when you go to your doctor after finding out your pregnant, anyways, so they have their own confirmation.
RELATED:
#2
When my kid's appendix burst, and we were checking in to the ER, this horrible couple came barging in, just freaking out and screaming and tried to go in front of us because their infant had eaten a grape. The baby was showing no signs of distress, but the mom's grandmother was allergic to grapes, so obviously, their baby was too. We were like, "I think we got dibs, lady."
#3
I see these way too often
1. Stop buying your kids trampolines. They have never been, and never will be, safe.
2. Electric bikes are motorcycles. Wear a helmet at the very least.
kzys59pcrp 3 hours ago
My four year old broke his leg on a trampoline when his older brother landed on him.
If you feel that your life is actually in danger, you must go to the emergency room. However, if your health problems are minor and can be solved by phoning your doctor or seeing them in person, talking to a pharmacist, or by yourself at home, you shouldn’t bog down ER workers with your issues. Of course, some situations can be in a bit of a grey area. Or you, as a patient, might not be educated enough to know what counts as a real emergency.
For example, Concordia University states that you should immediately seek emergency help if you suffer severe physical trauma after an accident, lose consciousness, have sudden chest pains, severe abdominal pain (especially combined with a fever), are short of breath, or have sudden strong headaches.
You should also go to the ER if you experience sudden numbness in your arms or legs, have blurred vision, or have a rapid pulse while resting when not emotionally stressed or after exercise.
#4
Hunger. It's just terribly sad.
K-Tanz:
This one is wayyyy more common than people think. Usually people will beat around the bush and have some fake complaint, but every once in a while someone will just straight up tell you in triage "I'm hungry". That and exposure to the elements. I've worked ER in Denver in winter and Phoenix in the summer and there's constantly someone there for "man, it's just too hot/cold out there".
#5
People falling on common household items. In this day and age, you can have things specifically designed to go up there shipped discreetly to your home.
They will feel way better and not get stuck up there. There is no excuse to still be shoving the bottle of Tylenol up there. You don't want to end up in the hospital...or with autism.
#6
Children's ER for a common cold, but make sure you wait until after the game is over on a Sunday night. It wasn't an emergency until after the game, not all day Sunday when urgent care was open.
🙄.
A sudden amount of pain or a rapid deterioration of your health is probably an emergency, and you should be safe rather than sorry. However, being slightly uncomfortable is not an emergency.
As per Concordia University, you should not go to the emergency room in situations when your life is not in danger, like when you have a mild cold or flu, small burns, cuts, or scrapes, or minor aches or pains. You also should not head to the ER to get your prescription filled.
At the end of the day, if you’re unsure of what (not) to do, get in touch with your family doctor, a pharmacist, or your health insurance company.
#7
The sniffles, so many adults and children in the er with head colds. Started 12 hrs ago haven’t taken any meds, walk into the er and demand to be at the front of the line. These are the entitled idiots clogging up the er. Each of them has to be registered and seen by a medical professional and takes up valuable time and energy away from truly sick or injured people. But the hospital won’t say anything about it because well that’s an easy er bill.
#8
Broken toes - nothing can be done.
kzys59pcrp 3 hours ago
Except when the broken toe is sticking straight up you need to go to the ER to get it set back in place
#9
Work notes when they know they are well. It's not because of the patient, its the employers requiring them too. I don't blame the patients at all.
We’d like to hear from you, Pandas. What is the biggest medical emergency you’ve ever experienced? On the flip side, have you ever seen anyone in the ER who most certainly wasn’t having an emergency? Have you ever gone to the ER only to realize you panicked over nothing? What about the opposite, where you thought you weren’t in danger when your life was actually at risk?
Meanwhile, if you’re a medical professional, we’d also like to hear some of your best and worst work stories. Feel free to share yours (anonymously of course) in the comments the bottom of this list.
#10
Parents that bring in their child that have an earache or when they’re sick but still drinking and playing.
It’s really hard on the parents but it can wait until a medical clinic opens in the morning. You’re just exposing your child to all the gross bacteria of the ER for nothing.
#11
I wish we had a functioning healthcare system where people had options -besides- the ER for non-emergency stuff.
FlamingoPanda 1 hour ago
This. I have gone to the ER for a tetanus shot that could not wait until the doctors opened on Monday. I felt terrible wasting their time with something so trivial but tetanus is not something to mess around with. In South Africa we do not have urgent care and we have a very hit and miss government run health care system so any government clinics that are open on a weekend are massively over capacity. Private ER (which thankfully I have medical insurance to cover) was my only option.
#13
Some “highlights” of my 12 year career…
Booked in as a head injury, was actually dandruff and was an emergency because they couldn’t sleep.
Abdominal pain ongoing for 20 years, no change in severity at all. Turned out to be trapped wind.
Took Nytol and got drowsy…
Step parent had a massive heart attack and they wanted to make sure it doesn’t run in the family
A blister on their foot from poorly fitted high heels.
#14
My son calls 911 when he’s going through a hangover so they will give him an iv and meds. He’s done this 4 times in 2 months.
Svenne O'Lotta 1 hour ago (edited)
You should probably have considered some of that newfangled "parenting" that everyone is talking about at some point before he was old enough to get hangovers.
#15
I take people to the ER.
The worst are the ones who call 911 because they think they'll get into the ER faster. Sorry, triage exists for a reason lol. Enjoy your 6 hour wait.
#17
Not me, but a friend is a nurse who worked in the ER. Men come in for being constipated because they haven't gone to the bathroom in 36 hours.
#18
From my dad (ER doc) throughout my life I’ve heard quite a lot. The thing that made him angriest and that he most often vented about, as the most frustrating and demoralizing thing imaginable, that he dealt with regularly; the casual cruelty of a system where issues that could have been treated successfully a long time ago weren’t, because people couldn’t afford it, had no insurance and/or were simply scared to risk official contact. People come to the ER for those kinds of issues when it’s finally apparent to them that there’s no choice, it’s an actual emergency. That’s usually way *after* whatever is wrong *actually* crossed the line into being a legitimate emergency. These patients quite often lose limbs to uncontrolled infection, will develop and endure permanent issues, become critically ill (ICU sick), and/or even pass away. Painfully and unnecessarily, in a hospital that pays the CEO more in a year than the average lowest paid full time employee will make in several lifetimes.
The ER, and associated departments like trauma surgery, must (and should, his problem wasn’t this bit even though his liability exposure to lawsuits was the same) provide at least baseline treatment for life threatening or extremely time sensitive care. This is true regardless of ability to pay, citizenship, or anything else (which thankfully is federal law). Even someone injured during the commission of a heinous crime etc. is entitled to at least this. That said, for profit hospitals won’t provide treatment a micrometer past the exact legal requirement. It’s more common than you’d think; he would see these types of patients pretty often.
As a doctor, he (of course) knew what could have been done earlier, and knew better than was good for him what their likely prognosis was down the road. Typically, that “federally mandated emergency care” cuts off as soon as whatever issue you’ve got isn’t *actively* ending you (and I mean in like in the next few hours, according to the satisfaction of arbitrary factors in some asinine bureaucrat stained flowchart). Next week “isn’t an emergent need until next week”.
For any conditions afterward (complications and/or chronic, debilitating, or progressive issues) there’s no cure, no getting better, and no regular treatment; even things that *can* be cured won’t be, unless of course the patient is literally about to die and the cure is the only, or cheapest, option (which means the treatment, often delayed for as long as possible, also has a much lower chance of success). That leads to an absolutely *horrific* revolving door of slow decline for patients that go repeatedly to the ER in dire straights, and receive only the pitiful amount of treatment “carefully” evaluated as *exactly* satisfying the bare legal minimum of care (not gonna die right now). Then they’re pushed back out the door…until they don’t come anymore. And *not* because they’ve been cured by a miracle; they’re just no longer in need in the most final and unacceptable way possible.
This is also a problem for cheaper insurance; after all, the most profitable client for an insurance company is one that’s fully paid up, but doesn’t survive long enough to use their policy for a large end of life claim and passes without a spent cent. They craft generalized, innocuous sounding rules like requiring multiple rounds of approval for expensive (and time sensitive) procedures that then come too late and aren’t done.
It wasn’t ever so much that he wished those people would stop coming to the ER, it was a wish that those people would never have to come to the ER for things like that in the first place. Things like a simple slipped knife while cooking slicing a deep cut across the palm of an undocumented single mother that works full time cleaning hotel rooms. Without insurance, a for profit clinic visit bill can be food for a week for an entire family, just for a couple simple stitches and a script for amoxicillin. There’s that, or the huge, existentially terrifying risk of going to a free one, since that can mean an unsustainable loss of work stuck waiting at a crowded clinic, or worse; some state funded/run free clinics are legally obligated to, or at least *can*, require their staff to verify the documentation status of patients before providing treatment. This is a woman who chose to push through it, no stitches, no antibiotics, with growing pain in a hand getting more and more impaired while she developed a fever etc, all while continuing to work, bare handing the kind of nastiness that people leave in hotel rooms; wet, soiled and wadded up days old damp towels, dirty stained sheets, garbage cans, toilets, and showers 8 hours a day. After she finally collapsed, she lost most of her left hand to gangrene, nearly died from septic shock, and spent a week in a coma. And yes, she was released from the hospital against her doctor’s advice (which only carries so much legal weight), to be deported as soon as the bureaucratic machine decided she was “stable enough” to travel. Those situations are *rough* things to see year after year. It’s not the injuries themselves (although I’m sure there was enough of that), it’s the sheer despicable waste and callousness that Dad witnessed, experiencing that system firsthand, for decades, from the point of view of a person that, paid well or not, dedicated themselves to helping.
I saw and heard firsthand his frustration and anguish pretty frequently, along with his struggles with alcohol and the depression that he endured while coping with the expected emotional consequences of routine death and loss that a big, high crime and poverty serving ER would have anyway, but with the terrible cherry of top of seeing the terrible consequences of the medical (specifically for profit and insurance organizations) industry’s absolute disinterest in *anything* outside of profit, with special emphasis on ignoring as many vulnerable people as is allowed. I’ve never seen anyone more passionate about universal healthcare.
As much as we all legitimately complain about and vilify idiotic randos wasting everybody’s time trying to get a doctors note for work out of a paper cut, or demanding only the best intensive care and “emergency on call podiatrist” be called in immediately from home (at 3am) for little Timmy and his just *mangled* foot (All while Timmy had just stubbed his toe on a sharp edge, bled slightly, cried a bit, and with him happily tottering around the room giggling). This one is real and it’s absolutely hilarious when dad tells the story. A day full of those is the *best* day, even if it’s infuriatingly dumb, because an eight hour shift of those is eight hours of idiots to tell funny stories about, with nobody suffering.
Dad’s happily retired now. He still has his struggles occasionally, but he’s got his sailboat and my mom and does ok. He still gets viscerally angry when the subject of healthcare comes up though, and I think he’d compulsively rant in rage at the top of his lungs, spit flying everywhere (that is, if he could keep himself from attempting to punch or strangle) if he was anywhere near certain politicians.
#19
#People who come into triage, walk out AMA, and then ambulance themselves in thinking it gets them seen faster. HOSPITAL STAFF ARE NOT MICHELIN STAR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUPPORT AT YOUR BECK AND CALL.
No, we do not know how long the doctor will be before they see you. *No, it does not* mean staff do not care about you.
You’re going to wait.
You absolutely DO NOT WANT to be the first priority immediately taken back to a room, cath lab, or operating room. Those patients are gonna be popular real quick because their last minutes could potentially be in that ER without **immediate** intervention. It’s one of the *most emergent* emergencies.
No matter who you voted for, our current HHS system’s deliberately harmful policy changes have absolutely messed you up, me, your mom, healthcare non-professionals ^yes ^they ^are^ professionals, and anyone else who needs healthcare.
#20
I want them to stop coming BACK to the ER. All the time we had people come, wait the long wait, see the doctor, get a prescription, go home, and come back the next day without ever picking up their prescription. We already helped you! We already did what we could! You have to do your part too by *telling us the correct pharmacy* and then *going to that pharmacy* and then *taking your medication!*.
#21
Er nurse, I wish family/roomates/etc would stop bringing in their friends/family who is drunk. We won’t do anything for them besides maybe give some fluids/zofran and just let them sleep it off. The number of pts I have where their family will get mad that nothing is done and all we do is let them sleep.
#22
STOP!!!! Calling EMS THINKING THEY ARE GOING TO TAKE YOU STRAIGHT TO AN ER ROOM BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT CALLING 911 AND TAKING THE AMBULANCE GETS YOU STRAIGHT BACK TO A ROOM. YOU TOO CAN GO STRAIGHT TO THE LOBBY AND TRIAGED THE SAME AS WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR. This has been a public service announcement from EMS in defense of all ERS across the nation and around the world.
#23
My mother once took niacin and got a niacin flush. She freaked out and insisted i take her to the er. I tried explaining to her and showing her the bottle that described the exact symptoms she was having that said its normal. She still wanted to go. We went. They told her she was having a niacin flush and she's fine.
#24
My sister in law used to work as a nurse in a DC ER. SO MANY tourists would come in because they got bit by a wild squirrel they were hand feeding and want to get tested for rabies. SIL would tell them squirrels cant transmit rabies to humans. The tourists would then demand to speak with a doctor. The doctor would say the exact same thing, then charge them a couple hundred bucks for a consultation and band aid.
Im mostly for universal health care in the US, but if you pull this, you gotta pay up. Call it a stupidity tax.
TLDR: dont feed squirrels, theyre rats with fluffy tails.
Tucker Cahooter 1 hour ago
Being in rabies-free Australia (touch wood), I wouldn't have known that squirrels don't transmit rabies either. Just like if I got bitten by a snake in Australia, I wouldn't pull out a copy of "What Snake Is That?" and start leafing through it; I would see medical attention ASAP
#25
Anything that has been a problem for more than a month. The ER is not the place for your 3 month history of shoulder pain.
#28
UNMEDICATED FEVERS. Please, please give your poor kid some Tylenol.
ETA: Kid vomited one time and is now acting normal. What do you want us to do?
The kid “felt warm” so you brought them in to one of the busiest ERs in the country at 0100?? Just for us to check the temp and usually the kid is afebrile.
#29
Diaper rash that has been ongoing for several weeks on Sunday night at 11:00pm. And oh by the way, can I have a doctors note to not work tomorrow?
#30
I had to be driven to the ER because we thought my appendix had burst. It hurt so bad I couldn’t think and hardly breathe.
There was this family ahead of me with a baby, maybe 1-? Showed no distress. They were talking about what was wrong with it, saying it could have been “all that shrimp” she ate, or maybe the lobster or crab meat.
#31
Oh, so many things. Bringing their child to the ER because they have to have immunizations to go to school so let's get them in the ER at three in the morning.
Bringing both your kids to the ER because one is getting a cold and the other one is surely going to get it soon. They want both of them to be treated. Neither of them will get any treatment if it's just a cold.
One guy told me when I asked him what brought him to the ER, that he had a hangnail on his toe. I guess I did a bit of a double take and he said, defensively, "my feet are important to me."
basically, treating the ER as a minor clinic and refusing to set up a relationship with a primary care doctor.
#32
I spent 8 hours in hospital with my friend yesterday just for the doctors to tell him exactly what I told him. You have the flu. Go home and go to bed.
#34
○ a "fever" of 99.1
○ you or your child has a low grade fever. you have not tried tylenol
○ you had a stomach ache yesterday, but now the symptoms have gone away (why are you here???)
○ you know you have acid reflux. you ate taco bell, now it is worse (this has happened with TWO PATIENTS now, both stated that it got worse after TACO BELL. what did you expect???)
○ your toe hurts. you didn't drop anything on it and don't think it's broken.
○ you need a medication refilled
○ you are having normal, mid-cycle cramps
○ you have a charlie horse
○ you are not sure why you're here, you just 'thought you should come' (this happens more frequently than you'd expect)
○ you have a small, superficial cut. the bleeding is under control. you cut yourself with something like a non-rusty kitchen knife.
○ you want a pregnancy test (you can buy one at the store)
○ you just got a positive pregnancy test... nothing else.
#35
The sniffles and a cough.
I know you have something viral, you know you have something viral, go take some sudafed and a nap. Or go to urgent care.
I suppose the caveat here is if they’re febrile, but not gently febrile. Like 102.5 and higher. We’ll still treat you the same but we’ll at least rule out bacterial infections. And no, your 99.5 fever is not a fever for you because you run cold. A fever is 100.4 or higher no matter how you run.
#36
Chronic stuff. People who’ve been having back pain for 15 years and decided to get it checked out at the ER today. Like, schedule an appointment with your doctor, Stanley.
#39
SO many people flood the ER on very hot or very cold nights because they're "disoriented." My local ER, for the most part, doesn't triage.
StrangeOne 2 hours ago (edited)
If they're disoriented then they're trying to tell you something is up with them they can't explain further because they don't know. On very cold nights, it could mean hypothermia. On very hot days, it could be heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
#40
I wish people would stop coming claiming they or their kid "have a fever" but they are afebrile, asymptomatic, didn't take Tylenol, and don't own a thermometer at home for measuring... so like, what are we doing here?
#41
1) my grandson has a splinter in his foot.
2) one child has a fever so bring all 4 in.
3) urinary tract infection.
4) "when is lunch?"
5) I think I'm pregnant.
6) sore throat
A lot of things can be handled at an urgent care.
#42
Common cold symptoms, throwing up once or twice but still tolerating fluids fine, STI checks with or without symptoms, minor sunburn, minor head injury in a young person, ingrown toenail without significant swelling or redness, whole family assessments after being in a low speed seat belted car accident, young people with constipation that haven't tried any of the plethora of OTC constipation medications, chronic conditions that people have had for months or years and seen specialists for already but "just can't take it anymore and want answers now".
#43
When they bring all four kids into the er cause they all have cough and sore throat all at once.
#44
I wish their PCP would stop sending them in for their “critical” blood pressure of 140/80. Probably on the low end in our waiting room, honestly. Same for “abnormal” labs that aren’t abnormal. Oh no, their potassium is 3.4, I literally could not care less.
And the urgent cares need to stop sending people to the ER and lying to them about it. “Oh, we’re calling ahead so they’re ready for you.” Unless they are coming in with something actually critical (which they generally aren’t), they’re going to the waiting room. Even if they’re an appy, probably starting in triage for a minute.
Oh, and Plastics is not going to come down to do the stitches on your face. Depending on the hospital, you may get an intern. Literally the only time I have seen them come down was when it was for one of their friends….
#45
To replace their family MD.
The assumption that we do what family medicine does is both pervasive and unfounded. I have not reviewed basic hypertension or diabetes management in two decades. But, ask me about current DKA or EDKA management, or hypertensive urgency and emergency protocols, and I am your guy.
I often end up giving the following explanation: “We are specialists like any other. You would no more ask your gynaecologist about your heart than you should ask me about the long term management of chronic diseases. There are just over 20 specialties, and the parts we know of each are the parts that are really urgent.”
Similar to this, for patients who ask why we do not continue the non emergent components of their work-up and management but instead discharge them with follow-up instructions, I add: “What we specialize in and what we maintain resources for is precisely what you do not want to have, especially not at an academic institution that treats complex and severe disease. The fact that your ongoing management and investigations can be completed by another specialist as an outpatient is good, not bad, and I would be the wrong person to carry those steps forward.”.
#46
A whole lot of stuff.
Pregnancy test
Work notes
STD checks
Prescription meds
Diarrhea/vomiting for an hour
Fender bender for insurance/legal
Minor first aid
Etc....
Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Tucker Cahooter 1 hour ago
Reading all this s**t, no wonder medical costs in the USA are going through the roof. Why the f**k are doctors in ER writing sick notes for work anyway?
Tucker Cahooter 1 hour ago
Reading all this s**t, no wonder medical costs in the USA are going through the roof. Why the f**k are doctors in ER writing sick notes for work anyway?
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