ROTHENBURGER: Nothing like a night in the ER to make us appreciate our health care

At one bed, a nurse succeeds in getting hold of the husband of a patient who has had way too much to drink. She explains to him what’s going on, then hands the phone to the woman in the bed.

After a brief conversation, they hang up the call. She’ll need to stay for several hours under observation while she sleeps it off.

“Good news!” another nurse tells a guy down the way. “We’ve got a bed for you!”

He doesn’t understand, at first. He’s already in a bed.

“A bed upstairs,” she explains. He’s being admitted onto a ward. Probably has an injury or an intestinal blockage or something else that will need a couple of days of testing and recuperation.

The hardest to listen to are those in real pain, especially if they can’t be given pain killers until a full assessment is done. All they can do is moan pitifully while they wait.

Elsewhere, another guy is yelling about something, obviously unhappy about being there, maybe about the fact the nurses and doctors can’t spend every single minute catering to him with the kind of service he thinks he deserves.

They bustle about seeing first to one patient, then the next, taking the blood pressure of those who have just arrived, and returning to those who have been here awhile and doing it again.

Doctors talk to each patient about what happened, how they’re feeling, has it ever happened before, and so on.

Nurses take blood samples, check heart rates, hook up ECGs. Depending on what the ER doc orders up, you may be wheeled away for an X-ray or a CT scan to help figure out what’s going on.

And, always, there are people in various colours of hospital garb walking briskly by where you lay on your gurney. There’s something about the ER, with its energy and its noise that is actually relaxing.

More than that, it’s comforting. You know you’re in good hands. Whatever the reason is that you’re there, you know you’re safe. If anything else goes wrong, help is close by. In the middle of it all, you get in a few winks as you wait for the next visit from a nurse or physician.

From somewhere, a male and a female voice waft towards you, a couple of the nursing staff taking a quick “break” to catch up on the status of their patients as they engage in a little kibitzing and chat about their plans for the weekend and maybe the newest movie they’ve watched on Netflix.

A police officer walks by, or maybe a paramedic, probably heading out with his partner on the next call after making sure their latest passenger has been properly checked in. On this particular night, maybe they’ve come from a house fire, or a crash up the Yellowhead or on the Coq.

Right now, with all the talk and gossip involving the RIH COVID-19 outbreak and the brave, day-to-day fight to save people in the COVID ward, less thought is being given to all the other wards in the hospital that carry on heroic work every day of the week. Surgery, pediatrics, ambulatory care, the clinics — all of it, all essential to keeping everyone alive and healthy.

Here in ER, the realization is particularly acute. It comes to you all over again what a selfless career path these people have chosen. They work long hours and long days helping people who are sometimes grateful, more than occasionally rude or even violent.

They put their own health on the line, whether dealing with COVID-19 or any of the myriad of other afflictions that come upon us. They’re young, old, male and female. They golf on weekends (the weather and COVID willing), watch hockey when they can, have mortgages and rent that must be paid, hobbies they never get around to doing.

They’re like us in so many ways, but in others are so much more than we are. There’s something that compels them to do what they do, to take up this sometimes dangerous, exhausting but obviously rewarding line of work.

Mostly, we don’t have to think about them too much. But in times like these, or spending dusk till dawn in the ER, we’re reminded about how much we depend on them.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: Nothing like a night in the ER to make us appreciate our health care

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