"Prioritisation in the Emergency Department"

 I was waiting in the ED at Bunbury Regional Hospital.

My child woke up with a swollen face & eye had closed over. They were in a lot of pain & due to it being an evening in the weekend , no pharmacies were open & there are no after hours GPs available.

Upon our arrival, we were greeting by a triage nurse that I felt gave us & the other patients an abrupt , but brief lecturer about what constitutes an emergency. They quickly scouted around the room to find out who was most urgent, whilst seemingly huffing & talking about how busy and understaffed they are. 

After about 15 minutes, another triage nurse arrived and gave us a similar lecture and rolled their eyes at me when I told them the other nurse was taking us in, in order of urgency, so I believed whoever was "next" wasn't applicable anymore...

My child went in & the nurse quickly assessed them with what I felt was little to no bedside manner. More like being a thorn in their side in my opnion.

We were fast tracked, which is still a 40 minute wait, but that's ok.. it is busy...

While sitting in the fast track area, we've had a triage nurse kicking rubbish along the floor seemingly angrily and making snide remarks... I hoped it would improve once we get through the other side, but when I first wrote this story, I felt compelled to share our experience, because in all of my adult years, I've never seen what I feel is a more unprofessional and blatantly rude nursing staff...

As a follow up, after what I believe was our deplorable treatment by the triage nurses at Bunbury Regional Hospital... which my child's swollen face & eye were seen as not an emergency, were in fact a severe, fast moving bacterial infection, that had we waited until we could get them into a GP, they could have lost vision or their eye completely.

I felt the nurse that treated my child did so with kindness, decency & the sort of professionalism that I feel one would expect when arriving at a hospital.