Unless of course your kid turns blue, does not wake up, gushes blood, needs stitches, ingests poison (call poison control first 1-800-222-1222 or on the way), falls several feet, gets hurt 100 or more miles away from your home or does something else that causes your heart to stop. The ER is not a good place to doctor your kid for colds (viruses), influenza, ear infections or chronic low grade things that you could wait to see your regular doctor for. Because the stuff is there they will use it: x-rays, cat scans, other people who are good with needles to stick your kid and draw blood. Why expose your kid to radiation for a cold or flu? And beacuse ER docs are just trying to do a good job in the world of medicine with no follow-up they will defer to antibiotics more often than a family doc or pedi might because they have better contact with you. So your kid might not really need a bacteriacidal agent and still get one. One day down the road they may get a more serious infection and need an antibiotic and it may be harder to find one that works because so many organisms are developing sneaky, witty, dammblasted resistence that is faster than we are because we have overtreated with the magical cillins, mycins and sporins at our disposal. Really, we don't even have to write the scrips anymore, just push a few buttons. I'll just briefly mention the cost thingy. I see a lot of financial waste with kids being treated for really, really, really non-emergent things in the ER. And this is coming from a member of the Green Party and if there was a Socialist Party in this country I would sign up in a tenth of a heartbeat. Single-payer I believe in thou.
I want to reiterate that I am a student and this post has not been evaluated by the AOA or the AMA and nothing I say should be taken as sound medical advice or doctoring know-how.
But this is my opinion. Next time stop and think, do I really need to take my kid to the ER for this? And if you have the luxury of stopping and thinking about it maybe you could just as well wait for your doc's office to be open.
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2 comments:
Having been to the ER twice for heart-stopping things, I would have to agree...it's not a nice place to be, so don't go there if you don't have to...oh yeah and both times x-rays were misread, once a false-negative for pneumonia, the other a false-positive for a broken thumb...both caused additional hassle/stress.
But, MSM, can you answer my question of why, if something is going to go wrong with your (or your children's) health or teeth (which for some reason aren't considered part of your body in this country) or your car, it happens on the Friday before a 3-day weekend?
Because then it gives us more material to write about.
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