I completely agree with this public service announcement at MDOD: if you have the flu, do not go to the emergency room. The flu is caused by a virus. There is nothing the doctor in the ER can do to help you. Antibiotics are neither required nor effective at alleviating your symptoms. Further, unless you are immunosuppressed (read: have AIDS or have had a transplant) or are very elderly, there is nothing about your condition that constitutes an emergency.
Please stop stressing our already fragile health care system -- not to mention the patience of several very overworked ER residents -- by wasting the ER's time.
Here's MDOD:
This is a public service announcement. You don't have to go to the ED if you have the flu. I just finished 4 of 5 days, and not a single day at any time were there less than 20-30 patients in the waiting room with cold and flu symptoms. Last time I checked, Wal-Mart has two entire rows of medicines that may or may not work as well as meds I may or may not prescribe for your self limited illness. Motrin, fluids and chicken soup go a long way. Yes, you feel bad, but your chances of feeling bad would have been less if you would have taken 10 minutes of your precious free time to get a FREE flu shot ( they were given free at several locations, or at some for $10).
The author also had this little anecdote which is just funny:
I actually had a 2 pack per day smoker tell me she couldn't afford generic Robitussin, and that she wasn't "in the mood for joking" when I told her she could hold off smoking just one pack and get some meds.
Maybe it is schadenfreude, but I can see why the author's sympathy was limited.
Hat-tip: Kevin, MD
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Telling a deeply addicted person to 'just skip their addiction for a few hours' to pay for cough syrup is about as funny as telling a person with debilitating cancer pain to 'just skip their pain meds for a few hours' to pay for cough syrup. And for essentially the same reasons.
IOW, it is neither funny nor appropriate.
I understand the sympathy exhaustion that comes from working with addicted people. It can be incredibly trying to see an addict "choose" their addiction over their job, food, shelter, health, family and friends.
But it remains wrong headed to treat it as a moral failing rather than a medical condition.
1. The flu shot is not effective against all currently circulating strains of the flu. I personally know two people who have been officially lab-tested and diagnosed with flu this season-- one was vaccinated.
2. Most people aren't doctors or particularly well-educated about the sometimes subtle differences between illnesses. They don't know if what they have is the flu or not. I had viral meningitis (yes, not nearly as dangerous or easily treatable as its more well-known sibling, bacterial meningitis) several years ago and it took me nearly a week to seek treatment, because it seemed like the regular ol' flu to me. If it had been baterial, and I shrugged it off because its unfair of me to use the health system I pay plenty for-- that would not have been very smart of me.
3. This may be a little "The sky is falling!!!" but in the case of another pandemic flu, I would bet that public health officials would appreciate the "early warning" data they'd receive by people showing up in ERs with dangerous strains of the flu, instead of waiting around for people to just start dropping dead in their beds at home. In fact, given the rapidly mutating nature of the flu, I'd bet even going in when you have the regular flu provides valuable information to the public health administration.
People can, and do, quit smoking.
Monado: Less than one person in twenty who tries to quit on willpower alone succeeds. That jumps to somewhere around one in ten for those who use nicotine replacements. Intensive therapy/coaching can push that up to about one in four.
No method of quitting smoking has an independently confirmed long term success rate of more than about 30%.
Nicotine is extremely addictive.
You don't have to go to the ED if you have the flu.
Well, one shouldn't go to the "ER" if there are local health clinics (or better still, you have a PCP who's not totally overbooked) that can handle it for you so that you leave the ER to the trauma cases they're supposed to deal with, but most people are utterly uneducated about the services they have available to them these days. It shouldn't be the ER's responsibility, but until this country figures out its medical priorities, that's where people are going to go because its the one place that can't ignore them.
But as for "flu and cold symptoms" - DAMN STRAIGHT you go to the doc. Until you're sure it's "just the flu", it may be something that will kill you. period. There are plenty of variants of strep out there (my wife's been fighting one off thanks to an ignorant coworker who came to work even after having been diagnosed with it).
You don't go to treat the symptoms, you go to get a real diagnosis to be sure what you have is a "simple cold virus" and doesn't have the signs of a bacterial infection that can be dangerous.
Now, after years of experience, I can generally tell if what I've got is something potentially bad or just "typical", but most people don't pay attention to the subtle differences between bacterial and viral infections (fever or not, color of mucus, style of cough, etc). I usually only go because the over the counter cough meds generally suck - the few that almost kinda sorta work on me really mess up my nervous system and disrupt my sleep cycles (and give me really annoying nightmares) so I go to the doc to get better meds.
The biochemical compensation for use of the drug is a physiological state. It is not a 'medical condition', nor a disease.