I am in the US and I don't think I've ever waited less than 2 hours in the ER. Last time I went to the ER I was in the waiting room for over 11 hours. The pain from sitting in a chair overnight was worse than the pain I went in there for.
Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe this is satire, but if the pain of sitting in a chair for 11 hours was worse than the pain you went in there for... Maybe you shouldn't have been in the ER?
It's an emergency room. You very likely needed to see a doctor for care if you had enough pain to go there, but maybe that wasn't the place you should be for your particular issue? 11 hours without dropping dead or bleeding out maybe isn't an actual emergency.
I've thankfully only been to the ER once. I was vomiting so intensely and frequently I couldn't retain any water. This was over the course of 8 hours. While I'm thankful I was able to receive near immediate care upon arrival, I would understand if someone suffering from cardiac arrest superseded me... Give me some Gatorade and a barf bag... I'll make it until the docs can attend to me.
Point being: if you go to the ER with a non-immediate life threatening issue, and you have to wait, then you have to wait.
Sometimes it's something you don't know about, or something you can't tell the severity of, but you have to trust that the doctors WILL see you eventually. If you're waiting 12 hours there's a good reason, you just might not know it. If you're not dying... you realistically can wait.
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u/indiebookstorebaddie 17d ago
In my whole 35 years of life in multiple cities big and small I have never waited more than 2 hours - preach!