ER

I just had the joy of spending the night at North Shore Hospital. My Mother had had a fall and needed to be checked out.

The ER had sections all fully equipped and with their own teams so you didn’t get to see all the dramas but it was really pretty quiet. The 3 most interesting patients were all admitted around 6pm…

• “Dr, I forgot to tell you that I had Southern Cross (insurance) in the ’70s, does that still count?” – no, you are in a public hospital, and the insurance only lasts as long as the premium, Sir.
• “Look, she’s happy to discharge herself and then I can just take her for a coffee” so why then was your friend locked into a room with a Ponch lookalike security guard stationed outside until 2am?
• halfway down the corrider the ambulance crew observed an room with double swing doors locked shut and observed that “she” was still in there.

We’d thought the fun would start at about 11pm when the party pill crowd started coming through, but no. There were the typical young kids with battered bodies from car accidents but luckily nothing too dramatic (that we could see) and you’d expect that.

Everybody we dealt with was amazing – we were quickly seen, assessments made, xrays etc. It took forever to get Mum up to the ward but the business end of “what’s wrong, what needs to be done” was fantastic.