Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"We are an ED in a suburban area surrounded by two large hospitals, one a level one trauma center. Our hospital is small, with limited staffing which has been exacerbated by the nursing shortage. At night, we are usually left with one doctor and four nurses. Our ED will fill up with admitted boarding patients around 8pm and when night shift comes on, we have a packed waiting room from patients who have left the surrounding hospitals due to long wait times. These patients have usually spent all day in the waiting room of the larger hospitals and we are getting inundated with volumes that our hospital is not equipped to handle. We have to see patients in hallways, in chairs, and in small rooms that don't have anything but a stool. This is not only dangerous, but its unsustainable."