Why YSK: If you’re injured or ill but it’s not life or limb threatening and you decide to call an ambulance thinking it’ll be faster and you’ll be seen first… WRONG. Ambulance crews very frequently will advise the hospital staff that you “can wait”. Then we’ll plop you into a wheel chair and push you into the waiting room with everyone else.
This is quite true, with one exception: It would be very wrong for any medic or EMT to tell a receiving nurse “that you can wait”. I am a paramedic in Virgina, USA, and that’s not how we do things. We deliver the patient to the ER, tell the nurse the patient’s chief complaint, our findings, and any other pertinent information. We do not presume to diagnose the patient or suggest treatment modalities or strategies. The nurse passes our information and any new findings to the doctor. It is ALWAYS the doctor who tells the nurse to find a staff member to wheel a non-emergent patient out of the emergency room. very often, as you point out.
When hubby & wife meet you at end of driveway. Hubby has “flu like symptoms” and wifey follows the ambulance for the 2.5 minute ride to the ER… you better believe the first words out of my mouth to the triage nurse will be: “This guy can wait.”