I haven’t been working on my project much in the last month. I’m no longer with the employer for whom that project was to have helped, and I can’t say we parted on the best terms. This left me with a bit of a bad aftertaste and I just didn’t want to code something which was to have been for them. I do intend to finish the project now, however, along with several other projects (a would-be-commercial website, and the “Hello, World!” du jour – my own blogging engine to potentially replace WordPress on appsCanadian).

These are not the topics I want to talk about tonight though. I’d like to digress, for a moment, into my personal life, and discuss something which came up tonight.

My girlfriend and I went to our hospitals emergency room tonight, because we thought she was pregnant (she’s not) and we were worried there may have been some complications (there weren’t).

We waited for four hours.

I think we were partially to blame for the wait. We left to get some fresh air, and told the folks at the desk that we were out for a few minutes, and they took our name. When we came back, everyone was busy, but my girlfriend said they saw us come in, so we were fine to sit back down. When we left again later (around the three hour mark) we mentioned we were leaving both before and after, and they took our name both times. We were in an examination room 20 minutes later. I wonder if we had just been skipped all night because we never formally stated our return from our first excursion. But I digress…

During our wait, it occurred to me that we really had no idea how long of a wait we had in front of us. The hospital, however, did. There are no hard and fast rules for how long any given patient will wait, since triage means that the most urgent cases are seen first, but there is a list somewhere in their computers which tells the staff who to call next. I think it’s a bit unfair that the patients aren’t given access to this information. If I go in with a mildly twisted ankle, and I know I’m ranked as priority 17 out of 20 patients, with an expected wait time of 4 hours, I might think it’s a waste of my time to hang out for a prescription of “ice it and stay off it for a while.” This is doubly true if I know that each of the next five people to arrive at the hospital are a higher priority than me.

When my doctor had be have blood work done late last year, I took a number and could reasonably guess, based on the average time between patient calls, how long I would be. When you wait in a long line at some major amusement parks, you’re generally given a (pessimistic) estimate for how long you’ll need to wait before you can enjoy the ride.

I got to thinking, why isn’t there a screen somewhere in the waiting area that shows your position in line? It seems trivial to assign each patient a small identifier – something as simple as a “take a number” or as “complex” as a three alphanumeric character code – which can be displayed on a small LCD screen or three, with the patients place in line.

Perhaps it would confuse some folks who might not understand the system, and would be furious to find that although they were 5th in line 15 minutes ago, that they are now 8th in line facing an additional half hour on their wait. I think most people should understand the “triage” system, and could understand what was happening. If not, there are some helpful staff there to correct any misconceptions.

Perhaps the hospital doesn’t want you to know what they really think of your condition. I think this is a poor reason to withhold information, since many people will assume the worst anyway. After a couple hours, my girlfriend and I seriously considered leaving because we assumed that if the hospital didn’t think it was necessary to get her in quickly, she likely would be fine to wait and go to a clinic the next day.

I think when you’re dealing with a lot of bored, worried people, full disclosure it likely best. If you’re backed up with some seriously sick people, we’ll understand. If you genuinely think a patient isn’t in need of urgent care, please let us know so that we don’t waste our time waiting for you to brush us off.