Abstract

The man had fallen in the hospital recovery room while attempting to put on his pants, readying himself to return home after an outpatient procedure. The case seemed so pedestrian at first. The emergency department charge nurse was annoyed; she called it a dump. “They’re sending a patient from the PACU to the ER!” she fumed. “Why can’t they take care of their own problems up there? Isn’t this a hospital?”I could relate to the gut aversion to having yet another patient in an already busy emergency department. The case did not fit our usual model. Most patients arrive at the emergency department from outside the hospital, by private car or ambulance. It was tempting say that this was outside our scope of...