I'd like to express my concern and inconvenience regarding my 5 hours stay yesterday Thursday November 24th 2011 at the Emergency Department in the University Hospital of Northern BC (UHNBC). My son (12 years old) has shortness of breath, fever, persistent cough with greenish material coming out for 3 days before Thursday. We had to wait from 9:00am till 1:45pm just for him to get an X-ray and prescription antiobotics. The staff in the ER department appeard "so relaxed" though we were the second people (me and my sick son) to be signed in at the front/reception desk.
I wonder as a tax payer whether there is a better and efficient system of taking care and handling children who are very sick, and not having them and their parents suffer the long wait, just that one doctor there told me in a "cold way": "What do you expect from an ER department in terms of service and length of time stay"?
I was being told a few times that the X-ray department is very busy with CT scans and other urgent patients who needed care. However, I kept checking the X-ray department room that was next to the ER and there was hardly ever the flow of "businness" of patients that was claimed by the attendant nurses and ER staff.
My son has finally got the X-ray and he was diagnosed with "classic childhood pneumonia" what was not new information to me given my background in medicine, and being a professor at UNBC. He was prescribed on an antibiotic for 7 days which given the severity I would also think he should have been prescribed for 10-14 days.
A final question for thought: Where are our tax-payer money going into, given the disorganization, fragmentation, and lack of responsibility that I always observe at the ER department at the UHNBC (PG Regional Hospital)?
Just a thought that I'd like to share with the Prince George Citizen and community as a whole.
Thank you,
Dr. Mamdouh Shubair
Assistant Professor, UNBC
