Emergency Care Entertainment
Is it really amusing?
I don’t consider myself to be an expert on all things healthcare, but I do have a variety of experience working in emergency medicine. I still find myself perplexed at human behavior sometimes, even after ten years of work.
We all stare- its human nature to do so. I know when I’m hungry and I’ve ordered food, I watch the workers like a hawk watching another animal handling my tasty rabbit. If you’ve ever worked in food service, retail, worked as a cashier, or any other job where the public can see you, you know the feeling of being watched. I think most of us have the same reaction, which is to try to ignore the behavior and continue working, while squirming under a microscope.
However, the intensity of emergencies and emergency care work makes the watching seem a bit inappropriate to me.
Years ago, I got my start in the healthcare field by volunteering at a fire department. It was very unnerving to know that somewhere nearby, a stranger in their car was watching everything I did, simply because they were bored and curious.
Imagine for a moment responding to a car accident and you don’t really know how bad the damage is, if you’ll need extra resources, how many people are hurt, or how badly they are hurt. You have a thousand things running in your mind at once, you’re trying to figure out how to best get your work done, you’re talking to multiple responders that you may or may not have ever met, working together to help someone, and people are staring at you.
When I was still new on the department, and learning where all of the equipment was in the roll up cabinets on the fire engine, I would die inside if I was on scene and had to open several cabinets to find what I was looking for, because I knew someone was probably staring and watching me struggle, while a fellow responder waited for the equipment I needed to bring them. Just because someone is a first responder doesn’t mean they aren’t new and trying to learn- experience is a great educator!
Plus… it always seemed a bit gross to me that a bystander would want to watch a fellow human’s injuries and problems.
The first major car accident I responded to was for a small car that had crashed head first into a bus. Why do people want to stare at something like that? The mom’s femur was snapped and her elementary school aged daughter died at the scene. Why stare at something like that?
Of course, my husband, who is not a first responder, was trying to get home and was stuck in traffic caused by the accident. When I told him why traffic had been so bad (without violating HIPAA) he was annoyed, while I was feeling devastated. I guess when you’re not involved it’s not as real.
About a year ago, I was working in the ER and saw one of the techs walking around looking a bit dazed. I had gone to his area of the ER to pick up one of the patients and take them to my side of the ER. As I was moving my patient, she joked that she didn’t want to be moved because she was enjoying listening to the drama that was going on in the room next door.
Later that night when I asked my coworker if he was okay, he told me that a patient had choked him. That’s the drama that my patient was enjoying listening to. Who knows if she knew what happened or if she was just enjoying listening to hospital staff and police officers as they tried to calm the violent patient down.
This type of behavior has been on my mind lately because of another issue I encountered last week. I was working in the ER taking vitals, and EMS brought in a patient that was loudly demanding an MRI. As the providers tried to explain to him that they were ordering a CT scan for him, not an MRI, he became verbally aggressive. The patient I was going to take vitals on actually got up from his chair to attempt to get a better view of what was going on. As I walked by, other patients looked like they were laughing.
I get it- patients and family members are in the ER, they’re bored, they’re seeing behavior that they probably don’t witness much. I know it’s human nature to stare and comment.
All I’m asking is that if you find yourself staring while an emergency is happening, or “drama” is unfolding, please be respectful to those involved, and remember that healthcare workers are human too.
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