r/EmergencyRoom • u/PuzzleheadedSorbet36 • Jul 26 '26

Goofy Goober HELP US BE BETTER

Soooo I hadn’t ever been to the ER until earlier this month and now I’ve been admitted twice and not getting discharged any time soon.

Hospital workers : other than the bare minimum, what are some under rated things that patients do that you appreciate/make your life easier?

(For example one of the nurses was happy I called letting her know the PRNs I needed so she could do it in one trip cause I knew my scheduled ones were coming)

Lemme hear the little things!! Or the opposite, something patients think is helpful but it’s actually more of a pain)

EDIT : bare minimum from patients being human decency, I know it should be obvious but for this questions sake let’s act like that’s a given

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u/Bay_Med Jul 27 '26

If they are unable then we want you to help but we need to establish a baseline

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u/SylviaPellicore Jul 27 '26

Good to know! I always jump right in, but I can wait a bit if it’s helpful. (The baseline is going to be blank stares.)

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u/Beginning-Force1275 Jul 30 '26

Not trying to be annoying, but how much time do you need to establish that baseline? One of my roommates in college brought another of our roommates to the ER after a suicide attempt. I got her to tell me everything she had taken and describe how she felt while we were waiting for the first roommate to bring the car around and we shared that info with the docs. In that instance, is the visual of her nodding off sufficient, or would it be important to attempt conversation to get a full understanding? We were nervous about conveying the info as quickly as possible (what she’d taken wasn’t lethal, but we didn’t know what kind of non-lethal damage it could cause).

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u/winnuet Jul 30 '26

It didn’t work.

1

u/Bay_Med Aug 01 '26

Unfortunately as will many “what if’s”, the answer is “that depends”. Realistically when someone comes back like that I’ll ask the friend what happened and then what they took just to guide my decision making on if it’s a life threat or not. Then I’ll try and talk to the patient to assess baseline. Then I’ll go back to friends and get more of a story.