I had a female family member go to the emergency department in the middle of the night recently because she was anxious and couldn't sleep about some non-emergency test results performed earlier in the day qnd didn't have the discipline qnd coping skills to wait for her doctor's office to call her with the results the next morning.
To be clear, she wasn't having any emergency symptoms. And her doctor wasn't on-call at the hospital. The hospital wasn't even the facility that performed her test the day before and didn't have access to her pending results.
She just went to the emergency in the middle of the night because "she couldn't wait". So of course the poor ER doc didn't have anything to offer her, but they of course redundantly ran a second series of futile tests that weren't necessary and validated her decision.
When another female family member was describing the series of events and I commented that it was an inappropriate use of the emergency department and being anxious and impatient are not excuses not to wait until morning to call your doctor's office.
The second narrating female family member said they disagreed and "would have done the same thing" and felt that "anxious feelings" were a perfectly good reason to use emergency services in the middle of the night.
We subsequently got into an argument when I pointed out that the emergency department is for "emergency symptoms" not "negative feelings".
It really made me realize how dangerous female decision-making processes can be if they are so heavily-weighted by feelings, even if this example is relatively benign.
I had a female family member go to the emergency department in the middle of the night recently because she was anxious and couldn't sleep about some non-emergency test results performed earlier in the day qnd didn't have the discipline qnd coping skills to wait for her doctor's office to call her with the results the next morning.
To be clear, she wasn't having any emergency symptoms. And her doctor wasn't on-call at the hospital. The hospital wasn't even the facility that performed her test the day before and didn't have access to her pending results.
She just went to the emergency in the middle of the night because "she couldn't wait". So of course the poor ER doc didn't have anything to offer her, but they of course redundantly ran a second series of futile tests that weren't necessary and validated her decision.
When another female family member was describing the series of events and I commented that it was an inappropriate use of the emergency department and being anxious and impatient are not excuses not to wait until morning to call your doctor's office.
The second narrating female family member said they disagreed and "would have done the same thing" and felt that "anxious feelings" were a perfectly good reason to use emergency services in the middle of the night.
We subsequently got into an argument when I pointed out that the emergency department is for "emergency symptoms" not "negative feelings".
It really made me realize how dangerous female decision-making processes can be if they are so heavily-weighted by feelings, even if this example is relatively benign.