No Room to Work in the ER

[meatonski]

I started a new assignment at Montefiore Medical in the Bronx, New York today and saw nothing less than third world conditions. I have been at county hospitals for all of my ER career and have seen understaffed and over crowded. Hallway numbered for the guerneys that line them as permanant ER slots. But this was more than I could stand.
One large room with guerneys side by side, two deep in most places all full of patients. To get to the ones in the back row I would have to move out the patient in front and squeeze my way back. All of the rails are down because there is not enough room to put them up and fit the next stretcher in. Spaces that were numbered for one patient had three or six in them. Forget washing your hands because you would have to move three stretchers out of the way between the sink and the patient you were trying to get to.
I don't doubt that overcrowding is a fact. I have worked it and, I am afraid to say, gotten used to it, but this was obscene.

[AmandaWIRN]

I have heard that that particular ER sees something like 750 patients a DAY- that is just astouding.... I have worked at busy ER's as well, but you couldn't pay me enough to work in conditions like that.....