By Karen L. Madsen, MSN, APRN-BC

Author's note: I hope you'll indulge me this week as I talk to you about our recent encounter in the healthcare system. In the next column, I will return to talking about nursing issues that are more global in nature.

I don't like this side of the bed. No, I take that back. I loathe this side of the bed. It scares me, it makes me angry, it makes me cry. I have no control over this side of the bed, I have little identity, I don't have much of a voice. All this and more ran through my mind as I sat at the bedside of my 15-year-old daughter recently. It had been a long time since I had been part of the patient equation of the hospital rather than the nurse. It was just as much fun as I remembered.

Our daughter, Grace, is our baby, the youngest of our four children. Grace is a typical teenage girl. She slams doors, she cries at the drop of a hat. She grazes all day rather than sitting down to a meal. She is funny and emotional and dramatic, and she is a world class champion at texting on her cell phone. All of our children have been blessedly healthy, but Grace is our emergency room child. You know, she is THAT child, the one who falls, who hits her head, who goes through a fence on a horse, the one who had more stitches by age 5 than her other three siblings had, combined, by age 20!

A few weekends ago, she came home from a school-sponsored trip on a Saturday afternoon unexpectedly pale and pouty. She can be dramatic, but is rarely pouty. I should have known then something was up or something was wrong. Her group had stopped for lunch at KFC and then she had ridden in the back of a school bus home for about 90 minutes, so I wasn't overly surprised or alarmed when she complained of feeling nauseated. I checked her forehead with the inside of my right wrist, my trusty mother thermometer. No fever. It was Saturday afternoon and I wanted to spend some time with my husband doing something we liked to do to relax. So, I basically told her to suck it up and quit whining.

We walked around a couple of flea markets and hit the grocery store for supper supplies. Once we were home, she took a nap and woke feeling a little better. Later that night, she had several episodes of vomiting and I began to think food poisoning rather than a virus was affecting my girl. Still, she had no fever, no localized pain, certainly no pain on either side of her abdomen. "Relax," I thought, "there are a million viruses out there right now. She'll be better in the morning."

And she was. Or at least I believed she was. As we had been up late the night before, both she and I slept until around noon. She woke up, ate a bite or two of breakfast, and had another nap.

It was another story when she woke about 5 p.m. She woke up moaning and retching. She drew her knees up in fetal position and nothing her dad or I could do would convince her to put her legs down. Now she had a fever, now she had localized pain in her abdomen, now she was crying with pain. She was tachycardic and diaphoretic and clammy. Grabbing my insurance card, we made a quick trip to the hospital ER. After we checked in, we waited. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited. Waiting in the ER with a child who is crying in pain is a nightmare. Waiting in the ER with a child who is crying in pain is a NIGHTMARE!

That never-ending night in the ER, I saw the very best of nurses and nursing--and I saw the worst. The worst wasn't that the nurses in triage were mean or unskilled; the worst was they didn't care about my daughter. They didn't care about the young woman across the room, also crying in pain, also waiting for hours. They didn't care about the young man who came in bleeding profusely. The initial nursing triage staff did the bare minimum required of them; they did it without a smile or a touch of concern. They did it quickly and efficiently and soullessly. They sat at their desk and ordered food and talked on their cells and told jokes within feet of my daughter who was in agony. How could anyone, let alone a health professional, be so insensitive? As a healthcare consumer, I was bewildered and angry. As a nursing instructor, I was horrified. And as a member of the nursing profession, I was embarrassed and ashamed. These were my colleagues. This was America in 2008. No one should be treated like we were that night, no one.

To be continued . . .

Editor's note: Read the second part of Karen's column. You can write to Sister Nurse at editor@stressedoutnurses.com