Feb. 24, 2026
Ep 28 How to Do the ER (Better Than I Did)
Date: 2/24/26 Name of podcast: Dr. Patient Episode title and number: 28 How to Do the ER (Better Than I Did) Episode summary: Getting through the ER feels like an uphill battle, and there are frictions on both sides of the bed that make the experience harder than it should be. I made lots of mistakes with my own trip to the ER last summer, and give some tips based on what I learned there. References: List of what to bring to the ER: Electronics: chargers: phone, laptop, watch, no...
Date: 2/24/26
Name of podcast: Dr. Patient
Episode title and number: 28 How to Do the ER (Better Than I Did)
Episode summary:
Getting through the ER feels like an uphill battle, and there are frictions on both sides of the bed that make the experience harder than it should be. I made lots of mistakes with my own trip to the ER last summer, and give some tips based on what I learned there.
References:
List of what to bring to the ER:
Electronics: chargers: phone, laptop, watch, noise cancelling headphones
Meds: actual bottles or list of prescriptions, supplements
Clothes: comfy clothes, extra undies, warm socks, nonslip socks
Paperwork/legal stuff: medical history form, emergency contact info, medical insurance card(s), healthcare paperwork (advanced directives?), drivers license/ID
Bathroom stuff: travel toiletries, lip balm, body lotion
Other: notepad and pen, luggage tags, pillow, pillowcase, something to read, sleep mask, prayers, hand sanitizer, silky pillow case, lavender lotion, your own blanket, reading light, reading glasses, ear plugs, sense of humor, cpap machine
Food/drink (realizing you might not be able to): granola bars, other snacks, gum, bottled water, water bottle with straw
People: hubby, me, mom, anyone who can advocate
Podcast website: www.drpatientpodcast.com
Podcast email, become a guest: drpatientpodcast@gmail.com
WEBVTT
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This is Dr.
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Patient, a podcast that examines all the aspects of the patient-provider relationship.
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I'm your host, Heather Johnston, MD, a real-life doctor and patient.
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Hello, listeners.
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I have an exciting, troubling, crazy story for you today.
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But before we get to that, I have a lot of new listeners and I wanted to take a minute to tell you a bit about some older episodes.
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When asked, I always answer that my two favorite episodes are literally the first two.
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Episode one is my own health story, but it's meant more broadly to help you understand what it's like to be really sick in the hospital.
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Episode two is where I interview my brother, who is a primary care doc in California, about a typical day in the life of a doctor.
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If you don't know anything about being a patient andor a doctor, please listen to these.
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I firmly believe that one of the things that will help improve our healthcare system is simply mutual understanding.
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Many doctors just don't know how hard and all-consuming it can be to have a serious illness.
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Most people have no idea how ludicrous and helpless the life of a doctor is these days.
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Beyond these two episodes, there are some on how doctoring used to be a long time ago.
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It's so lovely to listen to those stories.
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There's a frank conversation called Bosom Buddies about having breast cancer, and some mini-series, one on racial inequity in healthcare, and another on U.S.
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drug costs and more.
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All of those old episodes still apply today as much as they did when I recorded them a year or two ago.
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And with that, let's head into today's crazy story.
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From time to time, I like to share stories from my own healthcare experiences, not just to amuse you, as many of them are quite amusing, but because I hope that hearing me talk about how I dealt with something, either successfully or not, sort of, in this case, might help you figure out how to address something that you or a loved one are faced with.
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Sometimes my husband says, I'm seeing too much of the chicken, which is what he says when he's referring to the process of seeing a little too deeply into something.
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And that is how I feel when I have my own dips into healthcare.
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Like I'm seeing too much of the chicken of healthcare delivery.
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I spent so long as a practicing physician and even longer as a patient with really serious health problems.
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So when I go to a doctor's office or I'm in the emergency room or hospital, I see the whole experience from both sides of the bed as a doctor and as a patient.
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For example, when I was at a doctor's office last year and was seated near the front desk, I was appalled at how I was too close in physical proximity to the desk where people stopped to check in.
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So I could hear every single detail about them that they gave, their name, birth date, their reason for the visit, sometimes their financial situation.
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The patient in me instinctively knew it was wrong, but the physician in me was aware that it was actually a HIPAA or privacy violation, and probably no one at that office realized it was happening, since they're all on the other side of the front desk.
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They didn't know that someone who worked there really needed to come out from behind the desk to reorganize the furniture of the waiting room, which I'm sure will never happen.
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Another example of seeing too much of the chicken happens every time I visit my old orthopedic doc at a big hospital here in Chicago.
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As soon as I check in at the front desk, a technician comes to get me to bring me for an x-ray.
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To the average patient, this probably doesn't seem abnormal.
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But as a physician, I can tell you that it is not a great practice to order tests on people before you've even seen them.
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I mean, it's an orthopedic office, so most people probably do actually need an x-ray during their visit there, but it's of course statistically very unlikely that every single person there needs one.
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I've been there for follow-up type things when I know from my own medical training that I absolutely do not need an x-ray, but they still try to make me have one.
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When this happens, I simply refuse and say that I'll talk to the doctor first about it.
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Then everyone is very annoyed at me and I just sit and read on my phone and ignore them.
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It's uncomfortable, the seeing too much of the chicken feeling.
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I feel sort of stuck between worlds because of it, but it also gives me a unique perspective on healthcare encounters.
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And because of this perspective, I can simultaneously describe my experiences as a patient and also talk about how things should have gone because of my experience as a physician.
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So today I want to talk about a trip to the ER that I made last summer.
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As you listen to this retelling, you'll hear things that you know are just wrong and should not happen to anyone, regardless of how much or little healthcare experience you have.
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This instinctual reaction is really, really important because the fact is that things do go wrong in healthcare settings a lot.
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Why these things happen and who's at fault for them is something we'll cover later.
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But for now, as you're listening, note your reactions.
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I'll discuss how it all went down at the end and give some tips on when and how to speak up if you have that, hmm, this doesn't seem quite right to me type of reaction.
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There are a lot of things that went wrong with this one, some big and some small.
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Many of them are actually on me.
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Some are on the hospital system that I was at, and some are on the healthcare system itself.
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Basically, this is the story of a 24-hour hospital admission in which I had to hook myself up to a defibrillator machine in the emergency room.
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Yep, you heard me right.
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First, some background.
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And I'm gonna get personal here because I am an open book about my health.
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I have heart failure caused by chemotherapy that I received in like swimming pool type volumes in the 1990s.
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Thankfully, most of my heart problems are under good control, but over the last year and a half, I've developed a new extra fun electrical problem in my heart that's been causing some arrhythmias, just simply means weird heartbeat patterns.
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And that is what happened one morning last summer.
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I was in bed sleeping, and I woke up with the feeling of vibrations in my chest, with my heart beating in sort of like a rhythm instead of a ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump.
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I sleep with a smartwatch on, so I quickly put my finger on the watch button and recorded an ECG.
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Sometimes people call those EKGs.
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It's when you get a strip recording of an electrical activity of the heart.
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And because I'm a doctor, I knew that it was abnormal as soon as I saw the pattern, but then the rhythm stopped.
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I waited about 10 minutes.
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It happened once more briefly, but stopped again.
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So of course I went back to bed.
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Oh, please reserve all judgment of me and my forthcoming decisions for the discussion part at the end of the episode.
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Anyway, an hour or so later I woke up and it happened a couple more times and then stopped again.
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At least at this point, I made a plan to call my doctor, but decided to make said call after my hair coloring appointment, which was coming up imminently.
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Again, reserve the judgment for later.
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Though, as a side note, this is a real life scenario.
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I mean, I had something that had been scheduled months ahead, a special outing with my daughter, and it's hard to just drop it all.
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I hope you know what I mean.
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So, of course, I went to the hair appointment with my adult daughter, and as we're sitting in the chairs, it started happening again, a little more frequently.
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So, yes, I finally called my doctor.
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Remember from last season, I actually have a concierge doctor, which thankfully includes all hours direct access to him.
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So I called his cell phone directly, we chatted, and he was going to give my cardiologist a call on my behalf, which is awesome, and get back to me.
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And when he did, he told me to head over to the ER.
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But any of you listening that have ever had your hair colored will understand that you simply cannot walk out mid-coloring.
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I had bleaching chemical all over my head and a plastic shower cap over it all.
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In addition, because of the underlying color tone in my hair, at that point the bleaching had turned it yellow, as in duckling or sunflower yellow.
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This is like starting to sound like a clip from Legally Blonde, but like you really just can't stop.
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So I, of course, stayed for my beloved spectacular hairstylist, whom I love to finish up, with both of us getting more and more anxious by the minute.
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And I really owe him big time for suffering through those anxious minutes with me.
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And insert here that regularly occurring statement about resorving judgment.
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And next time I'm just going to say insert statement to shorten it up, and you'll know what I mean.
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After some amount of time that I'm not going to admit to, I was done.
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My daughter offered to drive me right to the ER from there because she was the responsible adult out of the two of us.
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But I knew I'd probably end up staying overnight in the hospital, and so I wanted to grab some things from home.
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So I opted to swing there quickly and pack up and drive myself.
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Okay, insert statement.
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But on a more serious note about this, for some reason, I am built in such a way as to feel terrible whenever someone has to get involved in my health crises and help me out.
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Part of that is simply that I've had so many health problems at this point that I really just want to shield my family from worrying about me as much as possible.
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It might sound selfless on the surface, but it's actually ridiculous and probably puts me in more harm's way not having them help me.
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And I'm literally ignoring one of my cardinal pieces of advice that I give to all of you, which is to always have someone with you to advocate with and maybe for you.
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So from here out, I am going to follow my own advice more and try to set a better example.
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Okay, but when I finally arrived at the ER at a big medical center right in downtown Chicago that will remain unnamed.
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When I did finally arrive at the ER at a big medical center right in downtown Chicago that will remain unnamed, there was a line of about six people waiting outside in the winter to get through security, which included walking through a metal detector, also outside, and having someone go through every item in whatever bags you have with you.
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I'm standing there and the fluttery feeling, the uh feeling, of course, starts happening again in my chest like a lot.
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I tell the security guard this and I say, I'm getting pretty nervous waiting out here.
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And she lets me know in a tone that insinuates that there will be no negotiation, that I'll be through the line soon.
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Okay, got it.
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I mean, it serves me right to have to nervously wait here in line when I took so long to even get myself there.
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It ultimately took about 10 minutes to get through that line just to arrive at the front door of the ER, then another five minutes to get to the check-in desk.
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Now, I know that my doctor has called ahead to let them know that I'm coming, and that I should be put on a heart monitor as quickly as possible.
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So after I do the obligatory paperwork, I sit down with the waiting room triage nurse.
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That's the nurse who quickly checks you out and assigns you what's akin to a danger level.
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He hooks me up to an ECG machine, but surprise, surprise, the fluttery feeling in my chest has stopped again.
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So the ECG is totally normal looking.
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Because of that, the ER triage nurse tells me to have a seat in the waiting area because they're clearly thinking that this is not a big deal.
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I reply that I think I'm supposed to get on a monitor pretty quickly and that my doctor had called ahead about it, and he says, he'll check on it while ushering me into the waiting room.
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Okay, I don't think that I deserve any special treatment, and I know that lots of people in the waiting room are very sick, but I also know too much as a regular patient.
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I see too much of the chicken, if you will.
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And I know that you don't take too many chances with heart rhythm problems, especially in someone who already has heart failure.
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But even though I'm a doctor, I'm also a patient and regularly feel very conflicted about the tension between those two roles.
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So I do what I'm told and take a seat.
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The fluttery feelings come and go over the next hour, and I'm just getting ready to call my doc again to ask for some help to get through when one of the nurses in charge comes out in the waiting area looking at everyone, comes over to me and says, What are you doing out here?
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You're supposed to be in the back on a heart monitor.
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Yes, I reply, I know.
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Let's get on with it.
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If you've ever been in an emergency room or even watched the pit recently, you know it's an emotional roller coaster.
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You're scared about why you're there, then you're frustrated waiting for your care and maybe getting a little angry about that.
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And then when they take you back, everything happens really quickly.
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Within five minutes, I was attached to four different machines: a heart monitor, a blood pressure cuff, an oxygen monitor on my finger, and the most important one, a defibrillator.
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Those are the pads that they put on your chest in case your heart stops and they need to shock it back awake.
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The overall concern was that I had a type of abnormal rhythm that could get even more abnormal and actually stop my heart.
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So they stick these freezing cold plastic shock pads to my chest and hook me up to the defibrillator machine next to the bed so that in the event of an emergency, they don't have to waste any time getting everything out, putting the pads on and getting hooked up, and they could just come right in and shock me uh right away within seconds.
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So at this point, everything's been hooked up, questions have been answered, blood has been taken, and it gets really quiet all of a sudden.
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Because there's really nothing else to do now besides just wait and see what happens on those heart monitors.
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I busy myself with calling various family members with updates, checking my email, reading up on how the bears preseason is going and other unimportant stuff like that that patients do to pass the time while lying in a cold, overly bright, sterile room in an uncomfortable bed.
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Over the next couple hours, no one comes in.
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They're able to see my heart monitor out at the nurses station, which is the most important thing, and I have a button to push if I need help.
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So I'm okay with no one coming in.
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But soon I really have to pee.
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So I push the button because I need to be unhooked from the various machines to be able to get to the restroom, which is literally next door.
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After about 15 minutes, a nurse comes in and unhooks me, and I let her know I'll be very quick.
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And so a couple of minutes later, I come back and I see the nurse in the hallway, and I tell her face to face that I'm back and just need to get rehooked to everything.
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Remember, that's the heart monitor, the blood pressure cuff, the oxygen monitor, and the most important one, the defibrillator pads.
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I wait about five minutes, no one comes in.
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So I push the nurse button again.
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And when someone answers, I let them know that I'm back and really need to be hooked up, and they say someone will be right in.
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I wait another 10 minutes and no one is around.
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I push the button again and no one even answers this time.
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So what to do?
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I wait like maybe another 10 minutes.
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I mean, I'm here for a dangerous heart rhythm, and someone thinks I need defibrillator pads on, so this is making me uncomfortable.
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And no, please don't remind me how much I was non-plussed about it earlier in the hair salon, because now I'm feeling like as long as I'm here, the correct things might as well be happening.
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So I do what I do best and forge ahead.
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I hook myself back up to the heart monitor, the blood pressure monitor, the oxygen monitor.
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These are all easy for me to figure out as I had experience working in an ER enough over the years when I was practicing medicine.
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But the defibrillator pads I hadn't touched in a long time.
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I mean, it really wasn't that difficult to figure out.
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There's a plug coming from the machine and a plug coming from the pads on my chest.
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So I put those two together, pretty much being sure that this action alone would not cause anything to happen.
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And then fine.
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It was all fine.
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But yes, I had to hook myself back up to a defibrillator machine in the ER because I could not get anyone else to do it.
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More hours went by, uneventfully.
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And around midnight, I made it up to the hospital floor where the staff continued to monitor my heart remotely from the nurses station again.
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Overall, it went fine.
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I mean, there was the time that someone said they would bring me a blanket for the bed and didn't, so I slept for four hours shivering on top of a bed with only a thin sheet on it.
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And there was the time that no one ever asked me for my whole ER and hospital stay whether I took any of my meds.
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So I just took my own and didn't tell anyone.
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Oh, and then the time related to that when no one ever brought me any of my medications to take anyway.
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And that time that two nurses woke me up from a deep sleep at 6 a.m.
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just to tell me that they're switching shifts and for the new one to tell me her name, all regular hospital stuff, I guess.
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So let's talk about all this.
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I have to say up front that the actual medical care that I received while there was very good, some of it even excellent.
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I also thought that everyone there meant well, even if things didn't go as they probably intended.
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That nurse that didn't come back to hook me up in the ER was actually great overall, despite that one miss.
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The nurse that didn't bring me a blanket on the floor seemed quite caring, and I'm sure she meant to do it and then just didn't get to it.
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Did that happen because she's actually incompetent and doesn't know how to get a blanket to a patient?
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Of course not.
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I'm sure she was simply swamped with work, and probably most, if not all, of that other work was more important than getting me a blanket.
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And so I want to remind everyone at this point that doctors and nurses and other hospital and ER staff are largely caught in this screwed-up health system as much as you are.
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They don't decide how many patients they will care for simultaneously, or how long you wait in the ER for a hospital bed, or how long you wait in the ER waiting room to be seen.
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They are working their butts off and are almost always given more work to do in a shift than seems humanly possible, but they forge ahead to do their best.
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So things get missed, and this is our new normal until we figure out a way to meaningfully change it.
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That being said, some of the things I described today should never, ever happen to anyone.
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Let's talk about what to do if you're faced with the prospect of having to get to the ER, whether it's because you think you need to or someone else is urging or recommending that you do.
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Because dropping everything and getting to the ER all of a sudden is very often a tough situation.
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Maybe you have young kids at home and there's no other adult there and you have to arrange for childcare.
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Maybe you're at work doing something crucial and don't feel like you can stop.
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Maybe you're on your way to check on your sick parent.
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Maybe you have a hair coloring appointment.
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Okay, not that one.
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Because I'll say clearly and unequivocally right here that I made a bad call on that one.
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A hair coloring appointment, no matter how in love with your hairstylist you are, is in no way more important than a dangerous heart situation.
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And I played that stupidly.
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But I'm just saying that it's a hard thing to drop everything and go, but you should.
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Or bring them with you.
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Stop your work.
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Get someone else to check on your parent.
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Skip the hair appointment.
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If you or someone else is worried enough about your health that you're even thinking about going to the ER, you probably should just go.
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And I'll also add here that it's not always clear whether you need to go or not.
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The spectrum of this scenario ranges from really not needing to go to the ER at all to actually, you really should be calling 911 instead.
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I don't want to get too deep into the actual decision making of whether or not you should be going to the ER in the first place, because that's too close to doling out medical advice, which I don't do.
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But I'll just say that if you're not sure, and if you are lucky enough to have a primary care doctor, try calling that office to see if you can talk it over with someone.
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That may or may not work, but it's worth a shot.
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Or if you're lucky enough to have a doctor friend, give that person a call and run it by them.
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Anyway, in the event that you, in fact, are going to go to the emergency room, here's a few tips.
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First, try your best to take someone with you.
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If you're sick enough to go to the ER, you probably shouldn't be driving yourself as I did, or be alone as you weave your way through the waiting room triage process.
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You might be too sick to really take in what the doctors say when you're there.
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Someone else could be writing it all down, calling people who need to know, and more.
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Second, bring some stuff with you because you are probably not a doctor and you don't know how long you'll be there or whether you might end up getting admitted to the hospital.
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Bring things like device chargers, medication lists, comfy socks, something to read or watch, and more.
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I asked everyone I know to contribute to a community list of what to bring with you, and I posted it in the show notes and on the podcast website.
00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:39.519
And there's a link to that site also in the show notes.
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Some of the items are silly, but I included them because if we can't laugh about this stuff sometimes, how will we ever get through it?
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Third, muster your patience to the best of your ability.
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Acknowledge that there are inherent frictions on both sides of healthcare.
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There are things in your life that might get in the way and lead you to make a bad decision.
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Or delay in your care, like I did with the hair appointment.
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And there are frictions on the healthcare worker side as well.
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They're overworked and stretch too thin.
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And it is for the most part not their fault.
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Having a little grace and patience for all involved in this process will help nerves and moods and make things go more smoothly.
00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:22.799
Fourth, trust your instinct.
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I'm hoping that you could tell what was going wrong in my story without me pointing it out explicitly, because it didn't take a doctor-turned patient to know when things were wrong.
00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:35.200
If you think something is going wrong, speak up.
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You may or may not be right, so be nice about it as you're speaking up.
00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:43.839
Or you may be right and still be ignored, but that doesn't mean that you don't say anything.
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:55.519
Lastly, I want to be crystal clear here and state that I am not recommending that any of you ever try to plug yourself into machines in the ER or in the hospital.
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That is not my advice.
00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:10.079
With all of that, I wish you luck if you ever find yourself or someone you love in this scenario, and I hope the story sticks in your head so that you can make better decisions than I did, and that the tips help out a bit.
00:23:10.319 --> 00:23:19.920
Stay tuned for episodes coming up soon on healthcare laws that protect patients, and how AI is affecting the doctor-patient relationship and more.
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:23.920
Thanks for listening today.
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:30.319
To catch up on more episodes and to get new ones delivered directly to you, subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:34.160
Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and more.
00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:42.720
If you'd like to be a guest or have an idea for an episode, let me know at www.drpatientpodcast.com.
00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:45.599
That's doctorpatientpodcast.com.
00:23:53.279 --> 00:23:54.720
Here's the disclaimer.
00:23:54.960 --> 00:23:58.079
Even though I am a doctor, I'm not your doctor.
00:23:58.319 --> 00:24:05.119
These stories, my comments, and all discussion is purely reflection about what's working in the healthcare system and what isn't.
00:24:05.279 --> 00:24:09.759
Don't use any medical information that you hear in these episodes to diagnose or treat yourself.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.400
If you have a question about your health, get in touch with your doctor or local health clinic.
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