Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 694.
Going to the emergency room.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 694.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpodcom.
Go there to download a learning guide for this episode that will make you healthy, wealthy and wise.
This episode is called Going to the Emergency Room.
This is the place you go in a hospital if you suddenly become sick or are hurt.
Let's get started.
Saturday, 9.35 p.m.
I arrive in the emergency room.
I had been at a party earlier in the evening when I accidentally cut my finger.
My finger wasn't severed, but it did have a very deep cut and I thought I might need stitches.
I check in at the admissions desk and I'm told to take a seat and wait.
Saturday, 10.40 p.m.
I'm still waiting to see a doctor.
The waiting room is filled to capacity and I expect it to be a long night.
Saturday, 11.15 p.m.
Several ambulances pull up to the door and EMTs wheel in several people on stretchers.
I hear that there had been a pileup on Freeway 215 and these were the victims.
I can see a doctor performing triage, and the most critical cases are taken into exam rooms and maybe directly into surgery.
Sunday, 1.25pm.
I decide to give up and go home.
If I hadn't bled to death by that time, I could probably wait until Monday to see my regular physician.
My evening in the emergency room wasn't a total loss though.
I learned a valuable lesson.
Never voluntarily go to the emergency room.
Our story begins on a Saturday night about 935 in the evening, 935 p.m.
I say I arrive in the emergency room.
The emergency room, sometimes called by its initials ER, is the part of a hospital that is always open to people who are very sick and who may die if they don't get medical treatment.
Medical help.
You can go to any emergency room in an American hospital and if you have a serious sickness or illness or injury, they will help you.
There was a famous American TV show called ER back in the 1990s.
My story continues.
I say that I had been at a party earlier in the evening when I accidentally cut my finger.
So I'm at a party with friends, and by mistake, by accident, not on purpose, I cut my finger.
Actually, I did once cut my finger.
I wasn't at a party.
I was cooking.
And then I had to go to the emergency room for help.
But in our story, I'm at a party, which sounds a lot funner.
I say, my finger wasn't severed, but it did have a very deep cut.
And I thought I might need stitches.
To sever, S-E-V-E-R, as a verb, means to separate.
Usually by cutting.
We often talk about that when it happens to one of the parts of your body.
His leg was severed in a car accident.
Severed then means separated or detached.
So my finger was not severed.
I still had my finger on my hand.
But I did have a very deep cut and I thought I might need stitches.
I thought it was possible that in order to make myself better, I needed to get stitches.
Stitch S-T-I-T-C-H is a piece of very thin material thread it's called that goes into your skin in order to close a very wide or deep cut.
Stitches are sort of like when you have a rip in your piece of clothing.
If you rip your shirt, you might take some thread and stitch up the rip so that it's together.
The shirt doesn't have a hole in it anymore.
Well, the same thing happens with your skin, with your body.
You can stitch it up with this special thread.
And that's what I mean here when I say I might need stitches.
Stitch has a couple of other meanings in English as well.
Take a look at our learning guide for those.
So I say that I check in at the admissions desk and I'm told to take a seat and wait.
The admissions desk is the place where you first go in a hospital, or perhaps just an office, and you are asking for an appointment.
You're asking to see the doctor.
You're asking to be admitted.
To be admitted means to be let in.
You can go into wherever you want to go.
Colleges and universities have admissions offices that are in charge of or responsible for deciding which students will get to study at that college.
An admissions desk at a hospital is where you go when you get there, to tell them your name, your telephone number, your insurance information and so forth.
Well, I check in, I go to the admissions desk and they tell me to wait to take a seat, that is, to sit down in a chair.
Saturday at 10.40 p.m., I'm still waiting to see a doctor more than an hour after I arrive.
This is not unusual in an emergency room.
They take the most serious cases first.
If you cut your finger, as I did well, you're going to have to wait sometimes a couple of hours before you can see a doctor, because you're not going to die if you don't see a doctor in the first couple of hours.
So that's what is happening.
I am sitting in the emergency room.
It's Saturday night, and the waiting room is filled to capacity.
The waiting room is a room, an area where you have a lot of chairs and are asked to wait in for your appointment.
This is especially common for doctors, dentists, other medical professionals have waiting rooms.
These are places where you are going to wait for the doctor and to finish playing golf and come back to the hospital.
To be filled to capacity means to be completely full.
There isn't room for anyone else, in this case, to sit.
On a Saturday night, emergency rooms are often filled to capacity.
The waiting room is full of people who have had accidents.
The weekends are times when more people drink alcohol, and that usually leads to more problems, medically speaking.
People get into car accidents and that sort of thing.
Shootings with guns happen.
You know, the stuff you watch on TV.
Well, on Saturday at 1115 pm now an hour and 45 minutes or more since I first arrived I see several ambulances pull up to the door.
An ambulance is a special car, a special vehicle that transports people who have medical problems.
So there are several ambulances that pull up or drive up to the door of the emergency room.
And EMTs wheel in several people on stretchers.
An EMT is an emergency medical technician, someone who gives medical assistance when you are hurt.
They're not doctors, but they do help people who are injured get from their home or, wherever they were hurt, to the hospital.
So they know some things in order to try to keep you alive if it's a serious injury.
My brother-in-law is an EMT in Minnesota.
So if you're ever in an ambulance in Minnesota...
You should say, hey, do you know Jeff McQuillan from ESL Podcast?
And if the person says yes, then that could be my brother-in-law.
Probably not, though.
A stretcher S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-R is a long portable bed really that we use to carry people in when they are sick or hurt.
In a hospital, the stretchers are usually on wheels.
That's why the story says the EMTs wheel in several people.
They bring several people in on these portable beds called stretchers.
I continue my story.
I hear that there had been a pileup on Freeway 215, and these were the victims.
A pileup, P-I-L-E-U-P, one word, is a traffic accident involving many different cars.
One car hitting another, and then another car hitting that car, and so forth.
That's called a pileup.
There had been a pileup on the 215 freeway, and these were the people who were hurt.
These were the victims.
I can see a doctor performing triage, and the most critical cases are taken into exam rooms and maybe directly into surgery.
Triage T-R-I-A-G-E is the process of determining which patients are the sickest.
Who needs help first?
Critical cases are very serious cases, usually ones that are what we would call life-threatening, meaning you could die if you don't get proper help quickly.
Critical has other meanings in English as well.
Take a look at the learning guide for those.
An exam room is short for an examination room.
This is not where you take a test.
It's where the doctor looks at you to see what's wrong with you.
The doctor examines you.
He or she will look at you closely.
Surgery is where they cut tests open some part of your body in order to fix something or to help you in some way.
So the doctors are performing triage and the most critical, the most serious cases are taken into exam rooms for the doctors to look at them and maybe directly into surgery, where the doctors will we use the verb perform perform surgery on them.
Sunday, 1.25 p.m.
Remember, I arrived at 9.35 p.m. on Saturday night.
Now it's already Sunday afternoon.
I say, I decide to give up and go home.
To give up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to stop trying to do something, usually because it's very difficult or impossible.
Don't give up, we sometimes say to people. meaning don't stop trying.
Well, I decide to give up and go home.
If I hadn't bled to death by that time, I could probably wait until Monday to see my regular physician.
Bled is the past tense of the verb to bleed, B-L-E-E-D.
It's irregular.
It's not bleeded in the past tense.
It's bled, B-L-E-D.
To bleed to death would mean to die because you are losing so much blood, that red liquid that comes out of your body when you cut it.
Well, I'm kind of making a joke here.
I say because I haven't bled to death, I can probably wait another day and go see my regular doctor, my regular physician, on Monday.
This is not uncommon for emergency rooms to be very crowded in some hospitals in some cities in the US, especially public hospitals.
I conclude by saying that my evening in the emergency room wasn't a total loss.
A total loss would be something that has no useful purpose or useful result.
Something that didn't give you anything.
I learned a valuable lesson today.
Never voluntarily go to the emergency room.
Voluntarily means no one is forcing you.
You decide that you are going to go on your own.
That's probably not very good advice.
However, if you're really sick or hurt, you should definitely go to the emergency room.
It's better than staying where you are and getting no help whatsoever.
In my own case, I ended up staying at the hospital, probably about three or four hours before I got to see a doctor who gave me some stitches in my thumb, and now I'm all better.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Saturday, 9.35 p.m.
I arrive in the emergency room.
I'd been at a party earlier in the evening when I accidentally cut my finger.
My finger wasn't severed, but it did have a very deep cut, and I thought I might need stitches.
I check in at the admissions desk, and I'm told to take a seat and wait.
Saturday, 10.40 p.m.
I'm still waiting to see a doctor.
The waiting room is filled to capacity and I expect it to be a long night.
Saturday, 11.15 p.m.
Several ambulances pull up to the door and EMTs wheel in several people on stretchers.
I hear that there had been a pileup on Freeway 215 and these were the victims.
I can see a doctor performing triage, and the most critical cases are taken into exam rooms or maybe directly into surgery.
Sunday, 1.25 p.m.
I decide to give up and go home.
If I hadn't bled to death by that time, I could probably wait until Monday to see my regular physician.
My evening in the emergency room wasn't a total loss, though.
I learned a valuable lesson.
Never voluntarily go to the emergency room.
Even when she has a difficult topic, our script writer never gives up.
That's because it's Dr. Lucy Say who is helping us each week.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2011 by the Center for Educational Development.
