Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"We are a large-volume ED, seeing 350-400 patients per day. When we have over 50% of our ED beds full of admitted patients (which happens frequently) we have a plan in place to move our physicians out to see patients in the waiting room. We also, at the same time, fill the hallways with stretchers, where patients are interviewed, examined and often given discharge instructions after their workup is complete.

We are drowning, stressed and we need help—desperately.

As you can imagine, this is not ideal as it is hard to ensure privacy, and patient comfort in either of these settings. Patient experience is impossible to improve for these patients (would you be happy if this was you or your family member?). Physicians are unhappy as it feels like we can't provide the care we want to, the care we went into medicine for. We are drowning, stressed and we need help—desperately."