A socialized medicine two-fer

First up - Sweden -- from the Stockholm, Sweden website The Local:

Jonas, 32, sewed up his own leg after ER wait
A 32-year-old took the needle into his hands when he tired of the wait at Sundsvall hospital in northern Sweden and sewed up the cut in his leg himself. The man was later reported to the police for his impromptu handiwork.

"It took such a long time," the man told the local Sundsvall Tidning daily.

The man incurred the deep cut when he sliced his leg on the sharp edge of a kitchen stove while he was renovating at home.

"I first went to the health clinic, but it was closed. So I rang the medical help line and they told me that it shouldn't be closed, so I went to emergency and sat there," the man named only as Jonas told the newspaper.

After an hour-long wait in a treatment room, he lost patience and proceeded to sew up his own wound.

"They had set out a needle and thread and so I decided to take the matter into my hands," he said.

But hospital staff were not as impressed by his initiative and have reported the man on suspicion of arbitrary conduct for having used hospital equipment without authorization.

While Jonas admitted to the newspaper that he has no prior experience of sewing up himself he sought to play down the fuss that his handiwork has caused, arguing that "through the ages people have always sewn themselves up".

A perfect example of Triage -- they set the sewing kit out in preperation of fixing his wound but they probably had a life-threatening case show up and the Medical staff rushed over to take care of that patient. Still, a simple wound wash and closure could have been handled by their equivalent of Nurse Practitioner. For a hospital to be this short staffed is not a good thing... As for reporting him to the Police -- if they didn't want him to touch the equipment, they should not have left it in the room with him. Reader KBIS26 left the following comment with an even worse story:

Take it easy Jonas..:)

i went to Malm� ER with a friend he had a fracture in one of his right hand bones at 8:30pm and they fixed it at 9:00 am day after, almost 13 hrs ....I think it is the same every where in Sweden not only in Sundsvall.. it looks like 24 hrs clinic not ER....

A lot more interesting comments too -- almost worth reading just to check out the comments. A more serious case from Canada -- from the Prince Edward Island Guardian:

Peakes woman loses her baby, dignity while awaiting hospital treatment
Losing her first baby was devastating enough but having to do it in a crowded waiting room is what angered Christine Handrahan the most.

The 29-year-old Peakes woman was nine weeks pregnant when on July 12 she started bleeding.

Fearing the worst, Handrahan and her husband, Michael, headed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital�s new emergency room.

There she waited more than three hours, blood seeping out of her jeans, tears rolling down her face as she feared she was losing her baby � or that she might be bleeding to death.

Still, she waited and waited.

More than three hours passed before Michael had enough.

She had miscarried -- some more:

Handrahan says nobody at the hospital showed her any compassion.

�They could have given me a room to go in. Not necessarily a room with a bed. Even if it had been their TV room, or their lunchroom, or their closet. That waiting room was jam packed full of people.

�Somebody should have cared enough to say �Oh my goodness, you�re going through a miscarriage, do you need some quiet time?� I was fighting my tears. I wanted a place to go cry.�

The hospital staff is, of course, "Launching an Investigation" -- bureaucratic-speak for C.Y.A. One last bit:

Handrahan, who works at a vet clinic, said she has never seen an animal being treated like she was treated at the province�s largest referral hospital. She came forward with her story in hopes nobody will ever have to go through what she went through again.

The 160+ comments on this story are worth reading as well. The British are backing away from their National Health Service as they are out of money. It will be interesting to see what Canada does as their system is a sort of hybrid between fee-based with insurance and the government teat - AKA: "free"