Doctor: Why Is Emergency Treatment Not Urgent In The United States?

Many people complain that the speed of emergency treatment in American hospitals is very slow, even for several hours; in China, even if it’s just a cold and fever, it’s also very efficient and convenient. Why do we have to wait so long for emergency treatment in the United States?

There are five levels of emergency triage system in American hospitals

All the emergency departments in American hospitals adopt the process of triage. The primary purpose of triage is to identify the patients who can wait and those who have critical lives to be rescued immediately.

So who is going to be the first gate of the emergency department? Triage nurse is a triage nurse in the United States, and most of triage hospitals in the United States follow the latest ESI (Emergency Severity Index – a triage tool for emergency department care) guide for triage. The first version of the guide was written by emergency physicians Richard wuerz and David Eitel in 1998, and now it is the fourth version.

According to ESI, emergency triage nurses evaluate the patients objectively, quickly and accurately, and divide them into five grades according to the severity of patients’ condition.

Level 1: patients often need acute resuscitation, such as intubation, asphyxia, no pulse, severe dyspnea, oxygen saturation less than 90% or coma;

Level 2: high risk patients or abnormal vital signs that need to be treated urgently, such as stroke, angina, etc.

Level 3: the vital signs are stable, but various emergency resources need to be used, such as pneumonia, etc.

Level 4: the vital signs are stable and an emergency resource is needed, such as urinary tract infection.

Level 5: non emergency patients who do not need to use emergency resources.