ER

My arm still aches after falling on the ice last week. The emergency department I was working in yesterday was designed to accommodate four people in psychiatric crisis with any overflow going into standard medical emergency department rooms. All the rooms were occupied yesterday, and the hallways were lined with patients. Many of them are adolescents waiting for inpatient psychiatric placement. This time of year, between the holidays and the end of the school year, always produces a large number of kids in crisis. This year seems worse. Covid outbreaks have been sporadically blocking access to some psychiatric units causing tremendous backups in emergency departments. Opiate overdose deaths have been through the roof too. This used to be my world, my problem to address, although I had little if any power to make anything move. Every morning I would come in and start pushing in some direction though, wondering why the hell it was so difficult to get people what they need in the richest country in the world.