The ER: A User's Manual

Helen Straus, MD

Cook County Hospital/Rush University

1900 W. Polk St. 10^th Floor

Chicago, IL 60612

(312) 633-5451

This presentation is designed to share details of the function of an emergency department from an insider's perspective. Such knowledge may allow for a smoother interaction and a better outcome for a client or family member in a stressful situation.

There are several factors to keep in mind when interfacing with the emergency department. These include knowing the functional model by which the department delivers service and understanding the inherent obstacles to the delivery of that service. For example, symptoms and severity comments are best directed to the "triage nurse"; (s)he will be more responsive if there are two people waiting to be assessed rather than 20. By understanding better how the emergency department is structured, a patient or professional can more easily accomplish their own goals.

Another set of factors to keep in mind are based upon knowing a given institution. It is helpful to know a particular institution so that unique circumstances may be taken into account such as whether the institution hires board certified (emergency medicine) physicians, whether the institution experiences slow times during the course of their day, whether they are particularly qualified in their delivery of certain specialty services such as mental health services or whether they have no specialist coverage at all in a given specialty. Knowledge of these factors may facilitate the receipt of services by a given individual.

Emergency Medicine is a specialty which encompasses acute resuscitation of any medical condition, assessment of any medical condition at any stage of the disease process, multiple patient management and safe patient disposition planning. As with any other specialty service, the greater the knowledge on the part of the consumer, the greater the likelihood of satisfactory service.