>serious accidents

These are not necessarily emergencies.

>Our EDs are also overrun, and a lot of it is because of people using the ED as a catch-all instead of getting a primary care doctor, using an Urgent Care or just being unable to be sick like a grown-up.

You’re funny, the A&E’s in NI are phone first. When you phone you are told what service you need to use. This is not the problem at the moment. Even if someone ignored phone first, our GP’s are also under serious pressure, people are waiting over 24 hours to hear from out of hours GP’s because they can’t speak to their normal one.

>It's totally possible that this guy 100% needed to be there, but I assume they have a functioning triage system that did not prioritize him higher up for a reason.

They do, said triage system only works however if the A&E department isn’t over capacity… which all ours are.

The emergency room is for serious accidents and emergencies. You could need to go to A&E without it being an emergency (e.g. a broken limb, passing out as a result of an unknown cause, etc). Please bare in mind, this is happening at a time where they had to close an A&E to admissions recently and redirect ambulances an hour up the road due to the resuscitation unit in the A&E being full (both in terms of beds in use, and halls being full). It is very possible it was so bad that someone ended up sitting in the A&E for 4 days who actual did need to be there.

No, the bosses have actually done all but come out and directly state they support them actualply.

If it wasn’t an issue for the emergency room triage would have sent them home or moved them to a minor injuries unit.