Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"I'm working in an nine-bed ED with an additional three-beds dedicated to psychiatric patients. We now have a patient who has been boarding with us for over five months with no end in site. She is unfortunately a disruptive person as well, interrupting patient care elsewhere in the ED as she wanders the hallways (we do have to allow her out of her 10x10 room on occasion and tying up our security resources. She has injured herself on occasion, and has refused medications until she is so psychotic that she can't refuse them any longer."