Good Prognosis:

• Your doctor hasn’t seen you yet, and you’ve been waiting for (insert average wait time) hours.
• You’re in a bed in the hallway.
• Your complaint consists of “months” or “years” of pain/nausea/headache/X Y Z.
• You’ve come to the emergency department for a second opinion, despite multiple subspecialist evaluations.
• You answer yes to every symptom the doctor asks you about.
• You get a blood draw, but no IV.
• The only medication you’re given is tylenol.
• Your doctor says the words “probably” and “virus” in the same sentence.
• You are talking on your cellphone, playing a game, or chit-chatting.
• You are talking on your cellphone, playing a game, or chit-chatting and the doctor has to ask you to stop.
• You “just wanted to get it checked out.”
• Your primary care doctor sighs on the phone when the emergency physician calls him or her.

Bad Prognosis:

• You get not one, but two IVs.
• You remark, as my GI bleeder did last night, “Boy, I’ve never been to a hospital so attentive and efficient!”
• You get your own personal doctor to take you to the CT scanner.
• Multiple doctors, nurses, and staff greet you in your room.
• The triage nurse walks you to your room and points at you while speaking to the doctor.
• You get a room all to yourself.
• You get a monitor.
• Your monitor keeps beeping, even though you’re not doing anything.
• Your doctor keeps checking on you.
• Your doctor sticks a finger in your bottom.
• You don’t argue with the doctor about getting this treatment or that one.
• You are kind, good-natured, and have been a good person in this life.