We had to make another trip to the Emergency dept at RPA last night. Thankfully, we were seen to pretty quickly. There were some dregs of humanity in there that were complaining that they had been sitting there since 3pm (this was about 9pm) and they were wondering when a doctor would be available to see them.
Given that I couldn't see anything wrong with all of them, I presume the staff just left them sitting there until they got sick of waiting and wasting time and left. There was one young wog there complaining of chest pains. He was a real pinhead. By the look of it, he was having chest pains because he had snorted too much coke (or some other drug). He was a really greasy guido, and he spent half his time trying to chat up the nurses through the bullet proof glass. We just rolled our eyes at him, which is pretty much what they did as well.
The stupid thing is that when you first turn up, you get seen by a triage nurse who decides what to do with you. We spent five minutes with the nurse, describing symptoms and that sort of thing, and he diligently took it all down on a form. That form disappeared into a file somewhere and we were told to wait.
Within 15 minutes, we were shown through to a ward where we were seen by another nurse (eventually). At least they had a TV in the waiting room, so I caught the end of a Harry Potter movie. The second nurse pulled out another form and took all the same details all over again. That took another 5 minutes, and the same tests that the triage nurse were run all over again.
Some time later, a doctor turned up. Thankfully, the doctor actually read the file instead of pulling out a form and taking down all the info again, but it would not have surprised me if all our stuff was taken down - by hand - a third time.
And you wonder why it takes so long to be seen by a nurse or a doctor - they are all double or triple handling the same information! They could probably see people 50% faster if they actually bothered to send the file around with the patient.
Hopeless. Is this why the medical system is always screaming for more funds? To buy more forms to fill out in triplicate?
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