A real challenge for hospitals

Staff should help patients understand how an accident and emergency unit operates

Patients with relatively minor ailments often do not like to wait in emergency rooms and insist on being treated immediately. Silvia Razgova / The National

It should not be difficult to understand the functions of a hospital's accident and emergency unit, yet many patients seem to be having difficulty doing just that. As The National reported yesterday, doctors and nurses working in the emergency unit at Al Qassimi Hospital in Sharjah have reported an increase in verbal abuse and threats made against staff by patients who are unwilling to wait their turn for treatment, often for minor ailments. This is, of course, unacceptable.

The problem is that, as Dr Ludmilla Wikkeling Scott pointed out in a comment article recently, many people simply don't understand how the health system works. They should not be surprised that, from the hospital's perspective, a sprained finger is a lower priority than a car crash victim or heart attack patient.

Al Qassimi Hospital sees about 270 patients a day in its emergency room, and it follows a strict triage protocol based on global best practice. However, medical professionals have to waste valuable time explaining how the system works to irate people in the waiting room. In a worst-case scenario, this could lead to delays in the treatment of genuinely critical cases. A few minutes can mean the difference between life and death for some patients.

Dr Isam Al Zarouni, the head of the emergency department at Al Qassimi, has warned that the hospital will take legal action against anyone who abuses a member of staff. While that may be necessary in the most extreme cases – perhaps those involving physical assault – we hope that this doesn’t become the default position. It would be far better to sort these things out on the spot than to involve the police.

The risk here is in replacing a backlog at the emergency department with a backlog in the courts, where time and resources are equally precious and priorities should be with more serious cases. The best prescription in the long run is a combination of education programmes and community outreach that explain the system and head-off any unpleasantness before it happens.