Nurses are concerned, too

Thanks to Jim Sherman for his cogent response to The Acorn's editorial regarding the Los Robles Emergency Room.

The original editorial was well-written and informative. I don't think the public truly understands that emergency departments everywhere are the social and medical safety nets for the entire country. We never close; we see everyone with every kind of problem and must meet all needs, great and small. That makes for an exciting job but also a great deal of frustration for patients, families and staff.

If your cartoon caught every reader's attention so that the article was read, then I suppose the joke on us was worth it. Still, it felt pretty awful to a lot of the staff. We would like nothing better than to bring patients out of the waiting room into a treatment room as soon as they arrive.

We have added more nursing staff so that less serious cases can be treated in hallways. We have moved offices to create more rooms.

Our emergency physicians even see patients in the waiting room and start diagnostics and treatments as soon as possible. We are all dancing just as fast as we can.

Hopefully the new patient tower will relieve the boarding of admitted patients in the emergency department. It is a problem all over the country, not just at Los Robles.
Camille Sindell, RN, s taff nurse Los Robles Hospital Emergency Department