people like you.

By impactEDnurse • Jun 8th, 2006 • Category: reflective practice.

It was a busy day at the front desk and it seemed I had already triaged most of the southern hemisphere and large populations of eastern Europe.
The waiting room was ringing with the suppressing fire of screaming babies and vomiting adults, as personal spaces bumped and jostled for air. Pockets of frustration were oozing up and it was getting ugly with a capital UG.


It was from amongst this throng that an Indian woman I had triaged earlier stepped forward. She had a serious chronic medical condition and should have been seen by a doctor some time ago, but as there were no beds available in the hospital, most of our beds were clogged with admissions. And to make it worse, she was constantly being bumped down the queue by more seriously ill arrivals.

This lady was angry:
“I’ve been waiting here for two hours now! …And all you are doing is letting your sort through!”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what I mean.” ….Her finger poked each word through the security window, “People…. like….YOU!”
And I don’t think she was referring to my gender.

I couldn’t believe this lady who on first blush had seemed friendly, articulate and obviously well educated, could possibly think I was basing my assessments on skin colour.

But two hours in our waiting room will mess with your mind, and unrelenting pain will quickly scrape the icing off your civility.
What I did, was to let the comments whistle past and patiently try to explain the machinations of the triage system, excusing its glacial response to her needs.

What I wanted to do, was slap her so hard as to cause her head to spin around on her neck until the centrifugal forces improved the circulation to her frontal lobes.
Which of course, hung us both on the same peg.

impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital. All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
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6 Responses »

  1. Hsien Lei on June 14th, 2006 at 4:21 am:

    Something similar happened to me once while working as a clerk in a high volume pharmacy. I was joking around with a pharmacist after misspeaking about how *I* was ann English Second Language (ESL) person. But a patient in the waiting room thought I was talking about *her* and confronted me. Boy, was she embarrassed when I said that I was talking about myself. People lose their minds when their sick and frustrated. :(

  2. Hsien Lei on June 14th, 2006 at 4:22 am:

    Hmmm, after seeing all the typos I made in my last comment, I don’t know if I’ve come very far after learning English at the age of 7!

  3. Kim on June 15th, 2006 at 2:44 am:

    I was born speaking English and my typos are still unbelievable at times, no matter how many times I proofread!

    I wonder what experiences the Indian woman has been through that made her think her wait was due to racial factors. But like you said, pain and frustration can alter perceptions and take the veneer off of civility.

  4. » we are what we write. on August 16th, 2006 at 5:29 pm:

    [...] Example 3 [...]

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