ER Olympics: The Triage Thunderdome

In true Olympic spirit, we of the Big City ED spent the wee hours last night devising a more compelling triage process. In the current system, a patient approaches the desk, explains their complaint, gets their vital signs checked, and is either immediately brought back for treatment or sent to the waiting room.

Clearly, we need more tests of bravery, skill, and endurance.

Under our new proposed guidelines, the following events will be added to the process:

1) A wheel chair race through a course littered with waiting room chairs, used emesis basins, and the random piles of the four or five suitcases certain patients feel the need to bring with them to the ER.

2) A floor exercise, set to music, that utilizes gymnastic skill to most expressively convey a fake seizure.

3) Some sort of parallel bars routine using the stretcher rails.

And finally...

4) A team relay that requires one patient to fill an uncapped urine cup in the bathroom, then hand off the cup as your team races opponents to the triage desk. Least amount of spillage wins.

Now if we could only get Bob Costas to host it...