I witnessed a glorious miracle last night at work.
Backstory: A 28 year old woman takes the cabulance in to the hospital for multiple minor complaints, some of which she's had for years. It's 10:42 pm when she rolls through the doors, on a Monday night. Miracle part 1 is that this patient is waved off to triage - too often, a patient gets a bed here just because they come via ambulance when too many little pawpaws are patiently waiting out front with real complaints.
I see her in Express Care, because she's 28 with minor complaints and that's how shit goes. Her xrays are back an hour later, but because I've got 15 other patients too out there it takes a bit to get her discharged. Finally, around 12:30 am she's ready to go. I've got her dc papers, her 800 mg motrin, and her ace wrap ready to go. "How am I gonna get home?" she asks. I shrug and continue the discharge because FFS, you're an adult so you figure it out.
She asks to speak with social work for a cab voucher. I tell her no. She demands. I call social work, who says no. I relay that to the patient, who then demands to speak to the charge nurse. I die a little inside, but let her sit there for 20 minutes and then go get charge. On our way back out to talk with this little shit of a patient I learn that the yelling and "Fuck you, I want a sandwich*" I heard earlier in the night was, in fact, from this very patient.
Charge nurse flat out refuses the bus pass, cab voucher, and even the demands to speak with the house supervisor, all through a very Oscar-worthy attempt at tears, sob story, and putting multiple family/friends on speaker phone to plead the case/yell/curse/cry on behalf of the patient.
MIRACLE TIME: After another 15 minutes of near-continuous bitching, a ride magically shows up at the front door to pick her up.
Imagine that.
*not even exaggerating this demand
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4 comments:
Poor you. I'm glad everyone stuck to their guns on this.
We're three/four/five states apart, right??
Coulda sworn this was every other night for the last nine months' assignment.
There has to be a website somewhere with a script these d-bags all memorize.
One place I worked, praise the heavens, one of the old school docs, when someone started the "How do I get home?" shpiel, would stop what he was doing, walk into their room, point to the lobby exit, and say, "You walk right out that door, sweetheart, and you do it now".
No points guessing who never had any problems getting his orders done the fastest by staff.
Very familiar scenario in every ER
This feels like every damn day where I work
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