You must also tell the nurse if you are allergic to any sort of medication or adhesive dressing. If you are, it should be recorded not only on the nursing notes, but also on the front of your chart and on your treatment card. The medications for all the patients on the floor are kept on a medicine cart with treatment cards for each patient. The nurse will take the cart around the floor regularly and record each medication and dosage.
The process of elective admission is now complete. On a busy day it may take several hours from the time you arrive at the hospital door to the time when you are finally settled down in your hospital bed.
Emergency Admission
Although the majority of hospital admissions are elective, you may be admitted to a hospital following an accident or for some other serious emergency. When you arrive at the emergency room, the clerk on duty needs information similar to that of the admissions clerk. He or she must know your name, address, insurance details, and major injury or complaint. The clerk is trained to recognize potentially dangerous symptoms.
Once the clerk has seen you, a registered nurse (RN) examines you to see if you need urgent treatment. If the nature of your injury is not life-threatening, you may have to wait for some time in an emergency room because the staff is dealing with other patients. However distressing the wait may be, a patient’s health is in far less danger if he or she is in the emergency room. Should something life-threatening happen, such as a cardiac arrest, then the patient is only seconds away from a team of experienced physicians and nurses and specialized equipment.
If you are brought to the emergency room following an accident and are subsequently admitted to the hospital, remember to ask a friend or relative to bring in a clean set of clothing before you are discharged. You must remember that the hospital cannot clean the clothes you wore on admission.
