Wow, which hospital was he at??

My father in law cut off his finger and had to wait about 12 hours in total!

Maybe Moore meant the time to get for a serious medical concern, like a heart attack. Hospitals do move quick on those.

I just think we need more urgent care centre doctors and nurses who can treat as well as nurse.

Kwind

A few years a go I went to the hospital with one of the worst migraine headaches I have ever had. It took about 2 hours before a doctor saw me. Another 30 minutes before they gave me demerol and an other hour after that before they gave me a cat scan. Since I was not having any chest pains or bleeding out I guess I wasn't high on the priorety list and I can understand that. It was also a Friday night in Hamilton. In the triage aspect, the worst cases go first and I support that. The last time I went to the hospital it was in the day time on a week day and I only waited about 40 minutes.

There is no way to predict how long you will wait. There are so many variables and things that can pop up suddenly. All in all I think that our health care system is better than a lot of countries but could use improving. My issue is the over all health of our citizens. If one were to do a study (i am sure one exsists) I bet that over all, Europeans are happier and healthier than North Americans. Four weeks vacation to start, even if you work part time seems pretty sweet to me.

It is a useless statement. YOur wait time depends on so many things:
--the day and time (are clinics open? is it WEdnesday noon or Saturday at midnght?)
--how many "orphan" patients are in the area (are there people who have to come to the hospital for care because they have no other access to a Dr.?)
--the season (Is it a holiday? what special events are happpening around the area?)
--your medical condidtion (how urgent is your situation?)
--the hospital (is it a local hosptial serving a small area or a major center with people transferred in from other places?)

ANd probably others as well

I've waiting 1/2 hour and on another occasion about 6 hours - when I took my daughter to the emergency a few month's ago we waited a good 7 to 8 hours

But I definitely feel that it depends of the nature of your emergency - heart patients and those who are brought in as a result of accidents are attended to first

The triage nurse makes the decisions I guess based on the urgency

But I definitely feel we need more emergency room staff so the waits won't be so long.

that's the answer exactly. More staff. Emerg rooms are woefully under staffed.

I've gotten in right away a couple of times. The longest I ever had to wait was for my son to get into emerg. at the children's hospital when there had been a car accident. Here is a trick - act like you are in a tremendous amount of pain. I've seen people get in right away and walk back out the door 15 minutes later because there was nothing wrong with them.

In Red Deer if you walk in yes. My husband waited for almost an hour and a half for stitches. In town (which is about a 20 minute drive form Red Deer Regional) the wait time is the time the doctor takes to get to the emergancy room.

The wait time in US emergency rooms can also be extremely long. I spent 4 hours in the ER for a broken toe. The hospital did not have to call a doctor in because they had a number of doctor on staff. I should have just taped it myself and saved a trip to the hospital. I once spent six hours on a gurney in the hall waiting for a bed.

Much of the problem in US ER's is that many low income people us the ER as a primary care clinic. Instead of going to a GP/primary care physician, they wait until a condition gets real bad and then go to the ER.

It depends on too many factors. The mean time is not a relevant number in this case. I'd like to know median and mode, both would tell me more than the mean. (mean = arithmetic average, median = the middle of the list from shortest to longest, mode = the most common number).

I once had a cetaceous(sp?) cyst behind my right ear, it was driving me NUTS at 5:00 on a Friday evening. I got right in and had it fixed in next to no time.

Another time I took my step-son in 'cause he had a broken finger. We arrived at the same time as one of the student cops from the Ontario Police college (playing baseball, catcher, with no face mask and had her nose broken). Both had to wait six hours to get looked after. (I spent a good part of that six hours lecturing both of them on basic safety concepts: Neither 'accident' should have happened. I'm sure they were happy to get away from me, but neither will ever forget what I said!)

There's just too many factors to give the mean time!

For myself. I went into the emergency room a total of 7 times between September and March. Average wait time you wonder? 8 hours. Two of those times I had to bring my textbooks with me because I had an exam the next day.

The only time they got me in there fairly quickly was when I had a blood clot in my lung and leg. You'd think they would get me in fast. The only part that went fast was I skipped the triage part and went straight into a cubicle to wait for a nurse to shove a breathing tube in my nose and to ask if I wanted to contact my minister because I was in pretty rough shape....to see the DOCTOR however...well it was about 1 am..I went in at 8 pm. 5 hours.

I can't imagine where they got a number like this. Except when I've been brought in by ambulance, I've never been seen this quickly. Ever.

Hes obviously stretching it. I broke my arm and waited 5 hours in emerg and I watch Grease TWICE, and I hate Grease!

I fractured a leg and had to wait 5-6 hours to be seen...mind you this was at night over the march break

I wonder if the time is based on
a) time to triage
b) time to first review by other than triage
c) time to resolution

or
if it was rated based on severity, arrival, city

or
if it was a valid use of emergency.

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Kaye, as I read your posts, I think of what you too have had to go through, and admire your resilience.

I live in a smaller community but we do have a fully equipped hospital. Last March I took my son in for what turned out to be a broken heel. This was a Thursday, about 4 pm. We were there about 4 hours including two sets of x-rays. The next Sunday I went down to the hospital at about 6 pm with an infected finger. (There are no clinics in town to go to). I was in and out, with a prescription and medication until the pharmacy opened the next day, in 15 minutes. No kidding. 15 minutes, in and out.

I agree that it is difficult to really offer a statement because we have not idea how he is defining "wait times". However, last Thursday evening I spent eleven hours in emerg to have my six-year old son's fractured finger addressed.

That being said, specialson tends to go into emerg at the top of the triage pool and we have always been seen very, very quickly when we do go in. Generally when specialson is in the emerg it is for breathing problems and profoundly disabled, medically complex kids with feeding tubes hanging off their wheelchairs and a history of seizures and pronounced breathing problems seem to move fairly quickly through the system!

We once walked in, jumped to the top of triage and specialson was back in a treatment room with a respiratory therapist, a ER doc and on oxygen within fifteen minutes. So I must say that while the ER's seem to struggle with the management of non-urgent cases, urgent cases do seem to be addressed in a very timely manner. Maybe that it what is important. When things are scary the system can move quickly, In non-urgent cases it is annoying not to be seen in a timely manner but at least not life threatening.

While sitting in the ER all night a few nights ago my thoughts kept coming back to the idea that by employing nurse practitioners and foreign trained doctors who can demonstrate appropriate credentials and skills (lots are driving cabs right now or doing similar jobs) the situation would improve tremendously.

Unfortunately the medical associations seems to struggle with these ideas to the great detriment of the public IMHO.

Having lived in the States for nine years now, I am pining away for Canada's amazing health care system. I have one of the best available health plans in the U.S. and still have experienced major complications, deductibles and mysterious fees that go bump in the night. Wait times have not been an issue for me. Finding a doctor on the health care provider's pre-approved list, now that's another story.

Be Well!
MG

Heh Marcus...welcome to wondercafe...glad you could join us...

Earlier this year I was wakened in the early morning by the stirrings of a kidney stone. The pain grew to be intense. It was my first experience with this. I thought I could walk it off and do some stretches as though it might be a cramp with an attitude. No such luck! 45 minutes later I was on the telephone to TelaHealth Ontario speaking with a nurse who identified what the symptoms were suggesting. The conversation ended with her asking, "If this was happening to your spouse would want her to go to the hospital for further care?"

I answered "Yes."

She responded, "Then that's what I want you to do. I will FAX our conversation to the ER and they will be expecting you."

I arrived at the ER at 6:45 a.m. and was asked a few brief questions and was wheeled directly into an examination room. Within an hour I had seen several nurses, the doctor, received a CT scan, and an IV. By 8 a.m. the results of the CT scan showed that it was indeed a kidney stone. The doctor proceeded to prescribe Demoral for pain and ordered that I be monitored over the next three hours. I was sent home around 11:30 a.m with pain killers should I need them with instructions to return if the pain returned.

The nurses and the doctor demonstrated a caring, efficient and professional demeanor. I felt like me and my relatively modest, albeit painful ailment mattered.

Triage time is based on severity of the illness. If you have something the triage nurse feels could be immediately life-threatening, you're through the door right away. By and large they are very good at their jobs. Everything else is stratified based on severity and order of arrival. Things like broken bones and migraine headaches, while painful to those suffering from them, are unlikely to have a markedly different outcome if they are seen in 15 minutes or 3 hours. There are exceptions, but most people are not an exception (although many think they should be....). Of course, the biggest factor in how quickly people are seen is how many other people decided to show up to emerg that day. The unfortunate reality of many emergency departments is that a good chunk of people have no business being there but they don't know any better. The ones that drive me nuts are those who have family doctors, but don't want to wait to see them for minor things and pop in to get something "taken care of". The cost for an ER visit is many times that of a simple visit to the family doctor, which we all pay for with our tax dollars.

Wait times of 20-45 minutes....yeah sure whatever Michael. Moore goes in for over the top propaganda and hyperbole, but at least he has good intentions.

This is a specific reply to the comment about medical associations stone-walling foreign trained doctors so they "have to drive cabs". Many foreign trained doctors are required to complete residency again when they come to Canada. This depends on the country they were trained in. To many people this seems like a waste of time, they're doctors, right? My personal experience, and from what I've heard from others in the business, is that the skill set these individuals bring is highly variable. Some are fantastic. Some are awful and a second residency is needed to either weed them out or bring them up to par. Medical education varies tremendously between countries and, in many countries other than our own, it varies tremendously even between schools.

Nurse practitioners are a great tool that the system is starting to utilize more and more. Expect this to expand further.

One final thing. I don't think Canada can ethically rely on foreign trained doctors. These individuals are trained in their home countires, often in public post-secondary institutions, and then up and leave for sunnier climes (cash-wise) as soon as they are able. I spent some time in Ghana last summer and more than 50% of the MDs trained there leave to work abroad. We should carry our own weight by training enough doctors rather than letting the developing world shoulder our burden (like they do by providing sweatshops for all the wonderful cheap garbage we buy every day!)

yes, 20-40 minutes is a total dream!
One morning I went and there was no one, I still waited for close to an hour.
(only one in the waiting room for most of that time - maybe it was the only downtime and the Dr. decided to take a much needed break?)
I wish there was a walk in clinic where I am - went to a neighbouring city on a Saturday morning and was out of there within 40 minutes! wahoo.