The Rant

(This is the short version without any stories…more to come later.)

Enough. I have had it with people not taking responsibility for their actions. There is no place in the Emergency Department (E.D.) for the drunken patient who was brought in by Emergency Medical Services (EMS, aka ambulance) and needs to “sleep it off.” I am tired of his / her (most often a male) belligerent behavior, physical and/or verbal harassment of nurses and staff. I am beyond pissed off at the potential needle stick that comes with a staff member trying to place an intravenous line on these belligerent patients. As it goes, chances are this is a person who doesn’t make good decisions from the get go, and thus he/she is at a higher risk of having a virus that could cause problems for the person stuck by the needle. Furthermore, these individuals clog the E.D., as the “sleeping it off period” takes hours. And finally, the overall healthcare cost of these patients presenting to the E.D. is astronomical. And guess who takes on the bill…you and I. It is completely and utterly ridiculous. Quite frankly, I am disgusted at not only these patients but also at our leadership for not taking on what has been an obvious problem for a very long time. We need a strong voice. We need legislature that will take a stern, no exception approach to dealing with people who present to the Emergency Department secondary to alcohol and/or other drug abuse. My solution is as follows:

1) Any patient who presents to the E.D. for medical care directly related to alcohol / illicit drug use MUST pay back society no matter the ability of the patient to pay for the ambulance ride and E.D. visit. It should be considered a misdemeanor under the strict sense of public intoxication. Repayment to society, i.e. punishment, should be in the form of public service, perhaps cleaning the ambulance used to bring the person to the E.D among many, many other options.
2) With regard to the same person in #1, any level of physical or verbal abuse to a staff member in the E.D. should result in an automatic charge of assault, battery, and/or equivalent against the person.

This is the short and sweet version. This is a serious issue, and ‘We’ should not allow this to happen any more. By establishing consequences, we are placing the responsibility back to the individual and away from our current lackluster approach of societal responsibility, which was put in place by our ever so wonderful ‘leaders’ on the Hill.