Madhouse

On mondays the ER tends to resemble a madhouse. It is the busyest evening in the week. Today was no exception. Hour after hour we had about 50 patients in the ER. That is a lot, considering that we have 15 regular admission rooms, pluss 2 trauma rooms (3 beds) and 3 observation rooms (10 beds between them).If we fill every possible corner with patients we can admitt about 30. The 10 in observation rooms do not have much privacy to present their problems, though it's better than the hallway and the triage area, which also has 3 observation bays. Still leaves about 20 patients on stretchers along the corridors, in the triage area, or sitting in the waiting room. Surprisingly, things moved along preetty well: nurses and doctors working efficiently. What made this monday different was the number of patients requiring isolation precautions. We had up to 9 rooms on isolation precautions at once. It got hard to find a bathroom for the patients that weren't isolated. Houskeeping were working their buts off! So that was a glimse of a typical monday at the ER.