A visit to the A&E

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Monday April 10, 2006 17:34 by Anton Paddy antonpaddy at yahoo dot ie

Don't be sick.

Or else bring a bodyguard.

I arrived at A&E at 11am, Friday.

At 12 noon I was asked into triage and interviewed by a nurse.

The nurse had an assistant standing beside her who was swaying from foot to foot.

I asked the nurse to deal with her, as I thought she was a patient, but the nurse said, “She’s with me”.

I explained I had a bad back pain, which was the result of lymphoma and wished to be admitted.

She wrote all this down and then asked if thee was anything else?

I asked if that was not enough and she said she would find out.

Things moved quickly then and I was moved to a cubicle to be seen by an Indian doctor.

He was professional and courteous and did his utmost to help and comfort me including giving me an injection for pain which was 5mg of P.Morphine at 12.15.

I was then moved into Zone 2.

This are was filled to capacity with patients on trolleys

It looked like a field hospital in a war zone.

Endless rows of patients waiting.

I managed to get a nice quiet place in a back corridor and settled in on my trolley.

At 17.15 two doctors came and gave me another 5mg of Pmorph as the pain was getting bad again.

At 18.00 a surgical doctor examined me and she was short and aggressive with her questions and answers.

She seemed to be concentrating on my presentation at the A&E for some reason.

She passed me back to the medical team.

At 22.15 a Spanish nurse arrived and I told her I was in acute pain.

She said she would ask the surgical doctor, who had seen me earlier, about it.

I then saw this surgical doctor creeping past my trolley without saying anything.

I called her back and told her I was in acute pain and needed some painkillers.

She said she did not believe in analgesing her patients into unconsciousness.

She did not know the name of the doctor to whom She had passed me over and did not know when they would arrive.

I asked what provision she had made for my pain until they arrived and she said none.

She then started calling for witnesses and a nurse came along with my file.

The doctor then repeated her “analgesing into unconsciousness” speech and said it would be illegal for her to give me a painkiller.

The nurse said I had had painkillers at 12 noon and 17.45. It was now 22.30.

The doctor then told the nurse to look the history of my presentation at A&E and said she was leaving.

When I agreed that her leaving was a good idea she asked me to repeat that which I did.

This was one aggressive, nasty and unhelpful doctor and I hope you don’t meet her if you are unfortunate enough to go to A&E.

After that a proper doctor from the medical team came to see me and sorted everything out including a nice bed in a ward.

As I say, For every bad one you will get a dozen good one.

antonpaddy@yahoo.ie