Dan Holman: Doctor needed in emergency room. One segment of NBC’s “First Tuesday” program this week dealt with the need for better emergency care in the United States. The NBC newsmen quoted authorities as saying as many as 80 per cent of accident fatalities die after they have reached a hospital. The program pointed out several examples why better emergency care is needed. Then it told the story of Illinois’ trauma program, the first of its kind in the U.S. Under the trauma program, Illinois hospitals are coordinated and classified. Ambulance personnel know what facilities certain hospitals have. They know what hospital is equipped to handle what injury. This prevents them from wasting time in transferring patients to other hospitals. The NBC program showed trauma patients being admitted to a Cook County hospital, pronounced dead on arrival, who were revitalized by immediate action. But the true test of the state trauma plan, NBC said, is in the small downstate hospitals. The television cameras were on hand in Pontiac to see a trauma patient arrive by ambulance and receive immediate attention. The conclusion of course, was that trauma patients receive immediate care in Illinois once they reach the emergency room of a hospital.
I took particular interest in the “First Tuesday” program because I had the misfortune to visit the emergency room of Graham Hospital last week as a patient. After falling down a flight of stairs and dislocating my thumb, I was in a great deal of pain and in a state of shock. I arrived at the hospital 10 minutes after the fall and was glad to know I would soon be receiving some relief from the pain. But no such luck. An hour passed and I was given a pain capsule that did absolutely nothing. The thumb was X-rayed and then for another hour I lay on my back watching a clock on the wall in the emergency room. After two hours. A doctor finally came and gave me a shot and the pain ceased. He proceeded to relocate the finger and I went home about 2and a half hours after the fall.
I was not too worried about the thumb and I wasn’t even too upset about the pain. I knew I was going to be all right as soon as a doctor arrived. I probably could have waited a week and I still would have been all right. But what disturbed me as I lay there was the thought that I could have been seriously injured and there still would have been no doctor on hand. I don’t want to be too critical of the situation, because I understand it, I think. There is a doctor shortage in this community. Every day, doctors at their offices are seeing as many patients as time will allow. The emergency room is not that busy. The doctors must be where the most people are. That is one way to look at it. Another way is this: When a patient enters the emergency room, he needs a doctor more than the patients in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. One should be in the emergency room. Even with the doctor shortage, some sort of arrangement should be worked out so a doctor can be at the hospital at all times. It is so important that it seems something could be arranged. Proper scheduling or shifts might do it. Or perhaps the hospital should pay a physician what he normally would make at his office to be at the hospital. Maybe county funds could be applied. In a community where there is a shortage of trained medical personnel, the critical areas should be served first. The life of a critically injured patient is much more important than the inconvenience of waiting an extra hour or so in a doctor’s office.
