Many people present to the ED because of minor injuries that happened in a public place: someone slipped on a banana peel on the sidewalk in front of the bank. If you saw it happen, you’d have a hard time not laughing and yet the first responder, usually someone within the bank, is unwilling to accept the responsibility for saying that things are probably okay.
They may say just that and suffix “but it’s probably better to go to A&E just to be sure”. And people acquiesce as if autonomy and interoception are like unicorns – one is not allowed to act according to one’s own common sense and one cannot know intrinsically that something is wrong within one’s body.
These people are correctly triaged as priority 4 and usually end up waiting an hour or two to be seen to be told what they already knew: no harm has been done. They usually apologise right off for wasting time. I used to demur, now I say nothing: they are right. Unnecessary presentations introduce friction.
The world is becoming less personal at the same time that it is shrinking faster. My solution to this problem is authentic living: to act in good faith, honestly; to say what you mean and mean what you say with due regard for the feelings that may be evoked; and to be willing to be wrong.
About some – few – things we cannot afford to be wrong, but the world is increasingly becoming a place where no-one is willing to be wrong: a bland and constricted living.
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