"Time to be triaged"

I am leaving feedback due to my concern about my experience as the partner of a patient, who has a background in triaging in Emergency Departments for approximately 9 years. I love our nursing profession and the people that make our industry great but when something is unsafe it’s important to call it out for our patients and colleagues so this comes from a place of being “helpful” and not hurtful.

My wife is pregnant (yay!) and was experiencing some concerning symptoms at work and presented to the emergency departing (EC) at KEMH one afternoon. We waited 1hr and 39 minutes to be triaged leaving her at considerable risk as an undifferentiated patient in a waiting room.

A triage, as per the standard should take approximately 3-5 minutes and with no other observable “priority” events in the calm and surprisingly tranquil waiting room (no code blue, aggression, difficult situations), up until her triage, only 4 patients were observed by me to be triaged in that time. More concerningly, I recall 2 patients did not wait to be seen and patients were seen based on arrival time, not objective priority. Patients with abdominal pain, guarding, active vomiting and distress we're waiting in time order next to patients who were on their phone having a relaxed conversation (of course the triage nurse may have known something I didn't). It took 7-10 minutes between each patient as paperwork was completed meticulously, seemingly being prioritised over the other patients potential deterioration.

I was shocked to see such an apparently low impression of urgency by the gold standard of obstetric cares emergency department. The staff were of course kind and caring as so many are. My feedback is intended to alert someone who will listen to provide better training, systems and care to those at more risk than us and can only hope that this department improved significantly and does not experience the pain of what some high profile public cases have been reported about. Please take this feedback seriously, I am very concerned from both a patient and (semi-) staff perspective about what was observed.