Ever noticed how the emergency room isn’t first-come, first-serve? Comedian Brian Frazer takes issue with that approach.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Don’t ever try to figure out how long you’ll be waiting to see a doctor when you’re in the Emergency Room.
Y’see, a doctor’s office is like a pizza place – first come, first served.
But the Emergency Room is like choosing up sides for a game of misfit kickball that you’re trying to lose.
Pick me! Pick me!
No, you look far too healthy and athletic. I’m gonna take the old guy with the green gunk oozing out of his skull.
But I have an ingrown toenail! And I was here first!!
Everything hinges on the medical urgency of the other patients waiting, regardless of when they arrived.
It’s really a giant poker game: gushing blood beats dripping blood, brain beats stomach, double-bypass beats single-bypass, triple-bypass beats double-bypass, kidney stones beat gallstones, gallstones beat Flintstones, left arm tingling beats right arm tingling, and hand falling asleep and hiccups beats ingrown toenail.
But there’s camaraderie between patients in the ER that you just don’t find in a standard doctor’s office.
Whenever someone gets wheeled in on a gurney from an ambulance, the entire waiting room lets out a collective groan – not because anyone feels sorry for the injured – but because that just pushed everyone’s waiting time back another hour.
However, there is a way around all this waiting.
Try to have your emergency during off hours.
Like if you have to use that really sharp knife to cut up a mango — use it at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning.
Then at least if it slips and cuts a finger off, you should be outta the hospital by noon.
Unless of course you forgot the part of your finger you cut off at home. Then you’re looking at two, two-thirty, depending on traffic.