This review is for the Emergency Room and staff.
When I…read morearrived there were 3 people at the front desk. The lady on the far left (long dark hair; wearing a mask) checked me in and was pleasant. A man was in the middle. To the far right, closest to the entry where the patient rooms are, sat another woman; dark hair pulled back into a bun (I cannot recall if she was wearing eyeglasses or not). Nonetheless, that far right woman racially profiled me, which could easily cost someone their life. I came in because I was having severe chest pains on the left side of my chest that had begun radiating down my left arm and into my fingertips. My head was hurting, my vision was blurry, I was feeling light headed, and I had no appetite. They did the EKG, bloodwork, xray, and head CT scan right away. Then I was left in the waiting room for 8 hours wondering if I was dying as the pain began shooting up and down my entire left side, including the side of my face. I tried to distract myself by working on my laptop until its battery died. Then I was left just sitting and wondering if I should call my children to say goodbye, as I watched literally everyone else in the waiting room get called back to a room except for me. I sat there shaking and crying, too weak to call out for help or advocate for myself. A woman came in hours after me was seen asap because she was caterwauling as she looked to see if that staff would react (and would go quiet when the nurses were talking to her significant other). When I finally heard my name, it was being screamed from behind the desk, by none other than Ms. Far Right Front Desk Seat. Mind you, ALL of the other names she stood up, come from behind the desk to call their names, open the door and take those patients back to their room. But my name she just yelled from the comfort of her seat, sans care nor compassion. Again, I sat sobbing in the wheelchair, chest pounding, could barely whimper an "I'm over here." I even tried calling the hospital phone number but couldn't get through to the right department. A woman went up to the desk to inquire if her loved one's name had just been called. As I watched Ms. Right Desk ask the lady verifying questions and rule out it wasn't, I managed to raise my hand to signal that it's me. The lady saw me and alerted Ms. Right Desk. "Could that be her?" the lady asked. Ms. Right Desk stood up from her chair, leaned forward across the front desk, looked me dead in my face, then muttered, "No. It's not her." I could not believe it. Here I am feeling like I am leaving this world, and that woman sat there and either purposefully delayed my treatment or ignorantly looked at my mocha brown skin and ethic features and made an assumption that my Latino name could not possibly belong to me. And it actually happened 5 other times during that night. Techs and nurses would immediately go to the Hispanic looking women asking if their name was mine. I would be the last one they approached each and every time. And each time their face had the look of shame and embarrassment because they knew it was wrong of them to make such assumptions. I expect this sort of behavior in small, rural, backwoods America. But Chicago?? A melting pot of immigrants? I am truly baffled by the ignorance and the way I was treated and left sitting alone in the corner of that ER waiting room, wondering if those were my last moments on this earth. But back to the issue. The nurse who took my initial vitals upon my arrival came out and looked right at me as she said my name. She gave excuses, saying I needed to speak up (with my labored breathing, worsened by my crying) and that they couldn't see me from behind the desk. Little did she know, Ms. Right Desk actually DID see me and chose to ignore me instead. Ms. Right Desk is in the wrong profession for that sort of bigotry profiling, and she should absolutely NOT be in the ER or anywhere where she can put people's lives at risk because of her prejudices and ignorance.
