Emergency Rooms
Millions of Americans visit an emergency room each year. Millions more have seen the hit TV show "ER". This has sparked a great interest in the fascinating, 24-hour-a-day, non-stop world of emergency medicine.
A visit to the emergency room can be a stressful, scary event. Why is it so scary？ First of all, there is the fear of not knowing what is wrong with you. There is the fear of having to visit an unfamiliar place filled with people you have never met. Also, you may have to undergo tests that you do not understand at a pace that discourages questions and comprehension.
In this article, we lead you through a complete behind-the-scenes tour of a typical emergency room. You will learn about the normal flow of traffic in an emergency room, the people involved and the special techniques used to respond to life-or-death situations. If you yourself find the need to visit an emergency room, this article will make it less stressful by revealing what will happen and why things happen the way they do in an emergency department.
Understanding the ER Maze
The classic emergency room scene involves an ambulance screeching to a halt, a gurney(推送病人的活动床) hurtling through the hallway and five people frantically working to save a person's life with only seconds to spare. This does happen and is not uncommon, but the majority of cases seen in a typical emergency department aren't quite this dramatic. Let's look at a typical case to see how the normal flow of an emergency room works.
Imagine that it's 2 a.m., and you're dreaming about whatever it is that you dream about. Suddenly you wake up because your abdomen hurts—a lot. This seems like something out of the ordinary, so you call your regular doctor. He tells you to go to your local hospital's emergency department: He is concerned about appendicitis(阑尾炎) because your pain is located in the right, lower abdomen.
When you arrive at the emergency department, your first stop is triage(医疗鉴别分类). This is the place where each patient's condition is prioritized, typically by a nurse, into three general categories. The categories are immediately life threatening; urgent, but not immediately life threatening; and less urgent.
This categorization is necessary so that someone with a life-threatening condition is not kept waiting because they arrive a few minutes later than someone with a more routine problem. The triage nurse records your vital signs(temperature, pulse, respiratory rate and blood pressure). She also gets a brief history of your current medical complaints, past medical problems, medications and allergies so that she can determine the appropriate triage category. Here you find out that your temperature is 101 degrees F.
What's next？ You need to register.
Registration
After triage, the next step is registration—not very exciting and rarely seen on TV. Here they obtain your vital statistics. You may also provide them with your insurance information, Medicare, Medicaid or Health Maintenance Organization card. This step is necessary to develop a medical record so that your medical history, lab tests, X-rays, etc., will all be located on one chart that can be referenced at any time. The bill will also be generated from this information.
If the patient's condition is life-threatening or if the patient arrives by ambulance, this step may be completed later at the bedside.
Examination Room
Now you are brought to the exam room. You promptly throw up in the bathroom, which may be more evidence of appendicitis. You are seen by an emergency department nurse who obtains more detailed information about you. The nurse gets you settled into a patient gown so that you can be examined properly and perhaps obtains a urine(尿) specimen at this time.
Some emergency departments have been subdivided into separat

A. Y
B. N
C. NG