Hospital ER Nurses Knew This Was Going to Happen Someday

Um, Healthcare? Pick up the white courtesy phone. Every had a terrible accident, or have a loved one call in the middle of the night with some horrifying news, and you had to rush over to the nearest hospital? Almost every time this happens: people have to wait in the ER for hours. Ofttimes, this wait makes what airplanes do on the tarmac while your smartphone battery depletes to nothing seem quick. The wait is awful. Sitting there with uncertainty about what lies ahead. No one seems to really care because you may as well be known as "number 84." And from your perspective, there seems to no rush. Surely, someone has said fuming with frustration, "This wait is killing me!" Whelp, it finally did... Last week, a young man named John Verrier walks into the St. Barnabas ER in the Bronx with a rash he couldn't figure out. He waited...and waited...and waited...and eight hours later, he was found dead...in the very ER waiting room seat in which he waited. According to a story in the New York Post, the 30-year-old was "found stiff, blue and cold" when the corpse was "finally discovered." An employee of the 461-bed facility said Verrier checked in at 10 p.m. and was found at 6:40 a.m., the next morning. Why? “He died because [there’s] not enough staff to take care of the number of patients we see each day. We need more staff at Saint Barnabas.” Surely, that's just an anomaly. Specifically, since no one bothered to check on Verrier even though his name was called upon "two or three times" between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. But then, there's this: It takes patients at The Bronx hospital a glacial average of 306 minutes to be treated and released — compared to the average 155-minute wait statewide and the average 137-minute wait nationally, according to the Medicare statistics. At Saint Barnabas, the more seriously injured are also in for long waits. It takes an average of 112 minutes to get pain medication for a broken bone, for instance, compared to the state average of 63 minutes and the national average of 59 minutes. It's terrible that this happened at St. Barnabas because excruciatingly long wait times happen at every hospital. In fact, doctors are saying that this certain federal health care plan is going to make wait times even longer. This worry you much? I'll bet there's a crisis communications plan being pried open at your local hospital in the next few days. Just saying.

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Hospital ER Nurses Knew This Was Going to Happen Someday

Shawn Paul Wood

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Shawn Paul Wood