A Day in the Life at an ER Room in Brooklyn (Video)

This was a nice write up in the New York Times about a day in the life, the types of patients they see, the questions and treatments the doctors prescribe and the talk between nurses and doctors.

The writer from the Times stated what he saw was incredible with people being brought back to life on such a regular basis. There’s also a full slide show here from his report. BD

There never seems to be a particularly good time to go to the emergency room, but nearly every American will pass through one at some point. Most will take home harrowing memories or gratifying ones. They will remember inefficiency or expert care. Almost always, the experience is often clouded in stress or, as time goes by, embellished by a Hollywood lens.
Despite years of health-policy debates lamenting the expense, and predictions that the rise of managed care would thin the crowds, the nation’s emergency rooms are busier than ever. Maimonides, a Borough Park hospital known for its cardiac and stroke care, has the fifth-busiest one in the nation. It saw 109,925 patients in 2009 — the year of the flu pandemic — up from 97,613 in 2008 and 81,931 in 2005. Mr. Hazaz, who repeatedly told anyone who would listen he had last seen a doctor in 1979, was one of 294 people treated there that Thursday, one of 1,511 during a typical end-of-summer week.
There are few windows in the emergency room, and the hum is incessant. In the nonurgent wing, patients typically see a doctor within 20 minutes. But they can lie on gurneys a long time waiting for tests and re-examinations — the median emergency room stay last year was 3.72 hours. The room is so packed that nurses, doctors and technicians squeeze past quadrupled-up gurneys in each bay, colliding in a dance of you first; no, you first.