Certainly, when you go the emergency room, there are many things that you can’t control. You can’t control how long you’ll have to be there, how many people need more urgent care than you do, or what the doctors will find. There are, however, certain things that you can control and the more that you take advantage of these items, the more smooth your process may be.
1. Id and insurance: If you have insurance, make sure to bring it with you to the emergency room. Bring the identification materials for the patient as well. If you bring your child for care, for instance, it’s not enough to bring your insurance materials. Bring the child’s materials.
2. Don’t bring a crowd: There are enough people in the emergency room – they don’t need extra people around. If you bring your child for care, don’t bring along the grandparents, both parents and siblings. One caregiver, or two at the most, is enough company for the patient.
3. Health record: If the patient has pre-existing conditions or medicines, make sure to bring materials on these issues. If they take medications, for instance, make sure you’ve got the name of each medicine and the dose. The emergency room doctors aren’t clairvoyant. They can only work with the materials that they have in front of them, and the more that you provide them with information, the better off they will be in creating good care.
4. Provide information: Along these lines, make sure to be upfront with the doctors. If you’ve brought your elderly father for care and he had two alcoholic drinks earlier in the evening, don’t hide this fact. If you noticed a bull’s eye on your son’s skin, but you assume it’s nothing, don’t blow it off! This small detail might be the difference between diagnosing Lyme’s Disease and missing it entirely.
