My experience with the Rush Emergency…
My experience with the Rush Emergency Room has been absolutely horrible. I arrived around midnight, and when I first got there, the emergency room did not even look that crowded. Seven hours later, I was still sitting there waiting to see a doctor.
I actually left a South Suburban hospital because the wait there was taking too long, only to come to Rush and experience an even longer wait. Rush is supposed to be a huge, well-known hospital, so I expected the emergency department to be properly staffed and capable of handling patients in a reasonable amount of time. Instead, I sat there sick, hurting, frustrated, and waiting hour after hour with no doctor.
I understand that emergency rooms have to take the most critical patients first. I understand triage. But seven hours is beyond ridiculous. A hospital this large should have enough doctors, nurses, and emergency staff working to prevent people from sitting there half the night or longer waiting for medical care.
What makes it even worse is what patients are sitting there watching while they wait. Staff are in the back laughing, talking, carrying on personal conversations with each other, checking their cell phones, and looking at social media while patients are sitting there sick and in pain. When you have already been waiting for hours, that is extremely frustrating and disrespectful to watch.
It seems like 99 percent of the time somebody is laughing, talking, having a personal conversation, checking a phone, texting, or looking at social media while patients are sitting there wondering when somebody is finally going to help them. I am not saying employees cannot ever speak to each other or look at a phone, but when people have been waiting for seven hours, the last thing they want to see is staff appearing relaxed and distracted while the waiting room continues to sit there.
And I am going to say this too: before cell phones and social media became such a major distraction, it seemed like emergency rooms moved faster and patients got a quicker outcome. Now everybody has a phone in their hand. Patients notice it. When somebody is sick, hurting, scared, or worried about what is wrong with them, they should not have to sit there watching employees scroll through phones, talk, laugh, and socialize while the hours keep passing.
Patients should come before cell phones, social media, and personal conversations. Period.
Then you have Patient Relations, which is another disappointment. Stop posting the same cold, scripted response under every negative review like that solves something. I see the same type of message posted over and over to different people complaining about their experiences. That is not real follow-up, and it does not show genuine concern.
If someone takes the time to complain about how they were treated, actually contact that person. Actually listen. Actually investigate what happened. Do not just copy and paste the same public-relations statement under everybody's complaint and then disappear.
Those scripted responses make it look like Rush is more interested in appearing concerned publicly than actually addressing what patients are saying. That is not Patient Relations. That is damage control. When patients keep complaining about the same issues, somebody needs to start paying attention instead of posting another canned response.
What is going on with emergency rooms these days? People come to the emergency room because they are sick, hurting, scared, and need medical help. They are not coming there because they have nothing better to do. Nobody should have to sit for seven hours watching staff laugh, talk, use their phones, check social media, and have personal conversations while they are still waiting for a doctor.
Rush is a massive medical center. There should be enough doctors, nurses, and emergency personnel available to handle the number of people coming through that emergency room.
Seven hours later and still waiting. Completely unacceptable.
Rush needs to take a serious look at its emergency room staffing, wait times, staff cell-phone use, social-media use, personal conversations during patient-care hours, and the way Patient Relations handles complaints.
Patients deserve timely medical care. They deserve professionalism. They deserve real follow-up. And they deserve to feel like somebody actually cares. Rush needs to do much better.