Being Forced and Choosing – The Difference
Okay, this sort of newspaper story pisses me off. The couple claim they were “forced” to walk several hours to get home. But read more closely – they walked home because they didn’t want to wake their friends.
Now I can sympathise, being stuck somewhere with no money and unexpectedly having to travel. However, they made the erroneous assumption that the husband would be admitted (it’s not an assumption you can make – having cancer isn’t an automatic admission criteria), and as such were discharged from the emergency department (not from a ward, as the article appears to imply) when treatment was complete, as is normal practice.
I particularly resented the line stating the couple weren’t allowed to stay in the ED despite the department being “virtually empty”. The number of empty beds is pretty much irrelevant – the important factor is the number of nursing staff able to look after those beds. Fewer nursing staff = few available beds. And the medicolegal risk of having people staying in unnursed beds is, in this litigious age, unacceptable.
I don’t understand why people assume that the hospital is responsible for covering them when they make assumptions like that. If this couple had phoned their friends and was unable to find someone to give them a lift, that would be a different matter. They didn’t though; they chose not to contact friends, and to walk instead. Choices have consequences, and the consequence of them not calling friends was they had no way to get home at that time except walk.
*sigh* But that’s my biggest gripe about society today – nobody is prepared to accept responsibility for their choices. It’s everybody else’s fault that they did what they did, it’s someone else’s responsibility to cover them for their poor choices. Sure, they could have done X (like imposing one someone, or denying themselves something), but that might make them feel uncomfortable; instead they’ll do Y and blame someone else for any subsequent discomfort.