As an emergency room specialist Dr. Josyann Abisaab sees many different types of injuries and illness during the course of her workday. The traffic seen in the emergency room also varies according to the season, and the time in the week. Weekends and holidays see more car accidents and other types of accidents are often due to alcohol consumption and in the case of car accidents, poor weather conditions. When someone arrives at the emergency room his condition is assessed by a triage nurse, assigning a level of relative emergency from one to five. One are things like sore throats, which are minor problems which probably shouldn’t be in the emergency room at all, while five are more serious, like a broken bone, which is a level five. Life threatening illnesses or trauma are beyond level five, and always get immediate attention.
Here is a list of the five most common reasons people come to the emergency room for care.
1. The top of the list people show up in the emergency room is due to falling. These are almost always preventable accidents.
2. Breathing problems are next. Most of the time upper respiratory problems are not an emergency and can be treated at home or by a family physician outside the emergency room. However, if the breathing is found to be quite difficult and is accompanied by chest pain, this is cause for concern as it could be a heart attack or stroke. Go directly to the emergency room.
3. Abdominal pain. This is a difficult symptom to decide if an emergency room visit is really needed. Most of the time the pain passes, but if you are just not sure, go to the ER.
4. Injuries due to weather such as a pulled muscle from shoveling snow, or falling on the ice. If you would prefer not to end up in the ER, don’t do any risky activity in bad weather.
5. People who are drunk and dizzy are the fifth most popular type of person to visit the ER.
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