Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"My 43 bed ED presently has 30 behavior health boarders, ranging in wait times from 12 hours to 873 hours. Thankfully, in this moment, there are no pediatric patients among that unfortunate group. We usually have one to three young patients awaiting inpatient psychiatric care. At present, we have no medical boarders, which is unusual, and as it is Monday, I anticipate that that will change. Under "normal" circumstances, we board 15-20 medical patients, often beyond 24 hours, and we usually board 10-20 BH patients. As recently as last week, we had several consecutive overnight shifts with 40+ combined boarders, 40+ in the WR with 12+ hour-long waits, and four to six nurses covering the entire department."