The Role of the Emergency Room in Your Auto Accident
By
Crash! Bang! You’re in an accident and rushed to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. You walk into my office a week later and we have a conversation that goes like this:
Patient: “Doc, I went to emergency room and they said, ’It’s just a sprain,’ or ‘Just a mild case of whiplash.’ I thought I would be okay.”
Me: “What did they do?”
Patient: “They took some x-rays, gave me muscle relaxers, a pain pill, and an anti-inflammatory.”
Let me take you through the day of the highly-trained trauma specialists that work in the best hospitals in the country. The doctor walks in to work and immediately has to intubate a 16 year-old with a collapsed lung: Life Threatening. Then she is called over for a gaping wound with blood squirting everywhere: Life Threatening. Right after she and her team get the bleeding under control , she finds her self dealing with a heart attack victim gasping for air: Life Threatening. Then she walks in to a room to find a person with neck injury. The x-rays she ordered earlier don’t show any broken bones, the patient seems stable, no apparent head injury, loss of consciousness, or life-threatening injury. So she follows protocol and prescribes a muscle relaxer, pain pill, and anti-inflammatory. She recommends you put ice on it and follow up with your primary care if you still have pain in a few days.
The role of the Emergency Room is to intervene in life-threatening or immediately disabling situations. If you are in an accident and feel you should go to the emergency room, please, please, please go. They can rule out life-threatening or immediately disabling injuries.
Keep in mind, the emergency room doctor’s training is not in managing long-term degenerative processes, or rehabilitating the spine. Her training is not specialized in documenting your injury, its progress, or lack of progress under a care program. Her training is not in wellness.
Information doubles every 18 months. That’s a lot to keep up with. If I am in an accident, suffer a heart attack, or cut myself using a chainsaw, I want the ER doctor who focuses her training on the best research and techniques available to keep me alive. I can worry about the rest later.
Here are a few statistics to keep in mind:
- One national study showed that it only takes eight days after an injury for the body to set up enough scar tissue to double the amount of treatment required for some injuries.
- 50 percent of the people who suffer a whiplash injury still have pain 10 years later.
If you’re in a car accident and go to the emergency room, please follow up with me immediately. I can assess your situation from a different point-of-view and determine whether or not you’ll need ongoing care for your injuries.
Share
