Jennifer Zelmer Emergency Quotations

One thing that's important to remember is that these are individual patients -- your son or daughter who went to an emergency with a broken arm or your grandma who ended up there with a heart condition.

We found that over half of patients visiting emergency departments were there for less-urgent or non-urgent conditions, things like chronic back pain or a sore throat. Whereas at the other extreme, less than one per cent who visited emergency rooms were most severely ill - people with diagnoses of shock or major trauma.

If we are to understand emergency department wait times in Canada, we must first understand how emergency departments are used.