Tbh I think emergency department doctors deserve the LEAST heat from patients out of all of us. I worked in emergency for 4 months and lemme tell you, it’s unforgiving work. Lemme give you an idea of what they’re days are like

•Patients that come in are arranged in levels according severity of their illness, NOT first come first serve.

•Pretty much every A&E in Jamaica is understaffed and overworked

•it’s one of the few specialties where everyday you working, you working every hour of the day.-

-Maybe in a good day you’ll have few patients coming in and get an hour to relax

•they are the first ones you encounter when you present to a hospital

•most of them take all patients VERY seriously

•there are always too many patients in the department because people (and I cannot stress this enough) LOVE to come to hospital for things they could have gone to a health center for

•so understandably, if your complaint falls on the lower end of the spectrum, you’re taken less seriously

•the AE doctors generally have a very good grasp on guessing the urgency of your issues, and yes, there are horror stories where the severity of someone’s illness was-

-underestimated and there were consequences, but that is, by far more the rarity than the norm. It’s usually due to negligent and incompetent doctors which to be completely honest, you’re not super likely to encounter in an emergency department

•the senior doctors are very selective in the doctors they choose to run their shift and those doctors are commonly exceptionally competent, even if based on experience alone

•with all that said, people will still come to the emergency department and cuss because of how long they’re waiting or how someone else get through before them.

•if someone’s complaint is more severe than yours they will DEFINITELY get through before you

•if there are a lot of patients in the department, it WILL take you a long time to get through

•absolutely NONE of these things means your doctor does not care. It is an extremely heavy work load and it (literally) wouldn’t kill you to be sympathetic to that fact