New Year's Day

Well, let's turn our focus here away from the humanitarian crisis occurring after the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean for a while and talk about something else for a bit.
Emergency Department - New Year's Day 2005 report:
The waiting room held approximately 1.5 x more people than the cubicles available for most of the shift. Of the cubicles available, many were not moving (ie the patients in them were staying put) due to the fact that 1: Our "short stay unit" hasn't opened yet. 2: There were no beds on the wards 3: Many patients were there for 6 and 12 hourly serial Treponin levels and Electrocardiograms. (Treponin levels taken over a certain period of time, if rising, indicate damage to cardiac muscle due to ischaemic changes (extended period of lack of oxygen to areas of heart muscle that causes damage to said heart muscle) and 4: The new coronary care unit hasn't opened yet either.
Compounding the problem (in my humble opinion) is that there had been a large mail out in the local area proclaiming the opening of our new department highlighting the fact we had extra beds and short stay unit etc. despite the fact that these haven't actually been opened yet! That and my personal suspicion that a lot of the people presenting with minor complaints are simply there to have a "sticky-beak" at the new E.D.
What eventuates is that the waiting component of the waiting room has blown out to several hours rather than the reasonable time periods we used to have in the old department. Perhaps it's just the time of year too...who knows. Things may improve when the dynamics and logistics of working in a new environment are more familiar to our staff as well, I'm hoping.
Have a good one people. More exciting installments from my rather uneventful life later on....
On a side note: The worst thing is that you can't reason with these people. They know that they are right and that's that - beware of people that make statements like this as I've often found that they are afflicted by the same characteristics of inflexibility and self-righteousness as they themselves describe.