The path of least resistance is the path most taken. That is what I have learned after a decade of hospitalist medicine. If you're a busy outpatient internist or family medicine physician and you have a patient call your office with multiple complaints you will likely be told to go to the emergency room. Do your symptoms sound life threatening? Go to the ER. Do your symptoms sound annoying? Go to the ER. Do your symptoms sound like they are going to take more than five minutes of your time? Go to the ER. Is the ER the right place for patients to be with 90% of their complaints? Probably not. Is the ER the right place to be for 90% of outpatient physicians trying to make it through their overcrowded schedule before making it to their kids soccer game? Probably so. Ever wonder why doctors and nurses seem to say just go to the ER? Isn't the answer obvious? If it's not, this doctor someecard helps explain why the reality of medicine in America today.
