Last night I was "mandated" (i.e. begged) to stay at work for an extra 8 hours to man the Triage desk, since a nurse called in sick. For those of you who don't know, Triage is where patients who want to be seen by a doctor in the Emergency Department show up, and get their history/vitals taken in an attempt to prioritize who will get seen first. Last night was, thankfully, an unusually slow night, and only a few times did I have multiple patients show up to the window all at the same time.

Now I usually complain when stupid people call an ambulance for some non-emergent problem. This time, it's the stupid people that didn't take an ambulance. Like the 20-year-old male who had 2 seizures in one day, but had never had them before in his life. A couple of hours after his last seizure he decided to drive himself to the ER. Now if it were me, I would be calling an ambulance at the first seizure… Imagine what would have happened if he had experienced a siezure while driving - he could have killed himself or someone else.

And then there are the just plain stupid people. Like the 18-year-old female that said she thinks she smoked pot laced with "something" a month ago, and since then was complaining of shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, vomitting, and occasional loss of consciousness. It took you a month to get this checked out? Similarly, a 28-year-old female complaining of abdominal pain. The patient was pregnant, but 2 months ago had an episode of severe vaginal bleeding, and thought she might have mis-carried. So you may have been walking around with a dead fetus in your uterus for 2 months? No wonder you have abdominal pain. Some people just amaze me.

Well after sleeping through the only call on the ambulance last night (it was some 2-Alpha non-emergency that the rest of the crew took), it's back to work today, and then back to the ambulance tonight.