Please, tell me the other challenges the hospital were facing at the time. Oh, wait, you won't know.
I did bank reception work in an A&E for a little while, and used to hate having to crank up the 'Estimated wait: x hours' scrollers. What would generally happen is..
- Quiet evenings, short waits - There's a big accident somewhere, ambulances scrape up the casualties - Casualties arrive through the ambulance entrance and go straight into the trauma room - Doctors get tied up with that, so a nurse comes out and tell you the new wait - Scrolly thing gets updated. - Walk-ins rant about shite service
So because it's not like Casualty, and you don't get trolleys coming through reception with people spraying arterial blood over everyone else waiting, people assume that the staff are lazing around doing nothing.
[/rant]
Plus, as you say, there's all the other stuff going on which creates a backlog. Social services can't come to pick someone up just yet, so a bed gets blocked. Because the bays are needed to treat the lovely drunk locals on a Friday night, people who need admitting but don't need constant monitoring have to wait in corridors. Add in cleaning, maintenance, staff illness/shortages, and all the other things that can bugger the scheduling of things up...
I did bank reception work in an A&E for a little while, and used to hate having to crank up the 'Estimated wait: x hours' scrollers. What would generally happen is..
- Quiet evenings, short waits
- There's a big accident somewhere, ambulances scrape up the casualties
- Casualties arrive through the ambulance entrance and go straight into the trauma room
- Doctors get tied up with that, so a nurse comes out and tell you the new wait
- Scrolly thing gets updated.
- Walk-ins rant about shite service
So because it's not like Casualty, and you don't get trolleys coming through reception with people spraying arterial blood over everyone else waiting, people assume that the staff are lazing around doing nothing.
[/rant]
Plus, as you say, there's all the other stuff going on which creates a backlog. Social services can't come to pick someone up just yet, so a bed gets blocked. Because the bays are needed to treat the lovely drunk locals on a Friday night, people who need admitting but don't need constant monitoring have to wait in corridors. Add in cleaning, maintenance, staff illness/shortages, and all the other things that can bugger the scheduling of things up...
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