Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"We are a 38 bed ED, usually with 30-40 patients in the waiting room and many EMS patients waiting for rooms in the hallway. Patients come in agitated, acutely psychotic occasionally violent. We cannot provide these patients with high-quality medical care when they are waiting for a bed for hours/sometimes days. We also have critically ill patients requiring higher level of care who have to wait in hallways. It’s not unheard of for these patients to decompensate before we are able to get them into a ED room.

How did we go from being healthcare heroes to an afterthought of the medical system?

This is not sustainable. Saving beds for elective surgical patients while truly ill, critically ill patients waiting hallways in the emergency department is disheartening. It’s unsustainable, morally wrong, and dangerous for staff and for patients. How did we go from being healthcare heroes to an afterthought of the medical system?"