I'm also consumer of the Canadian Medical System, Nova Scotia division, and have had lots of interactions especially over the last few years. My mother's stroke anniversary is in two days, and I was diagnosed with asthma at 6 months. I also have the joys of allergies, including foods. I've seen good, bad, terrible, and exceptional. I've experienced levels of frustration that I didn't think possible, but just when it gets to the point where you have to either scream or slap someone, you run in to an individual who is actually there to care for people, not just pay off the student loans or put in time wishing for early retirement.
I have three personal incidents that I really can't prioritize, so chronological order will do.
There are times when the medication I have for breathing just doesn't work. Panicking about it just intensifies the problem in a negative feedback loop, but over the years I've gotten to the point where I know that things are beyond what I have at home, which, thankfully, isn't that often. I was on aerosol therapy 4+ times a day and preparing my own before first grade, so I am familiar with the procedures involved, and just needed supplies.
One time, I left things much longer than I should have. I was getting the colour fading and vision narrowing effects from lack of oxygen when I arrived at the E.R. I likely shouldn't have been driving, but ambulance response times can counter any ambulance priority once you get there. I honestly don't know how briefly I was waiting in triage, but when I did get in, they skipped over things like the O2 saturation monitor, going directly for treatment. By the time they got the monitor, I was doing much better, and had come up to 64%. The people there that day recognized the problem and went for the fix, as requested.
The next time, I didn't wait as long, so I wasn't the poster boy for suffocation when I came in the door. I just kept getting worse over the next too many hours. When I finally got to the front of the line, I needed almost an hour of treatment, the treatment I had told them I would need when I came in the door, instead of the 5 minutes that would have stopped the incident in it's tracks if given within the first half hour of my arrival. The end result was that I was in for over twice as long as I had been for the previous incident!
My final incident was something I was not familiar with, broken bones. The four-hour wait seems to be typical, although I haven't looked for the official stats. I was left to my own devices to find a way to elevate the foot, to try and reduce the swelling and accompanying pain. They tried setting the bones, put on a cast, then took some X-rays to see if it was good enough. It wasn't. After two more times, they decided that pain management might be a good idea. By the time I was in for the fourth round, I almost made a pass at the X-ray tech. The breaks were about a third of the way up my foot, and while the bones ended up connected, the alignment was much less than optimal. My dreams of a career as a foot model are over.
I've found out that the ambulances can be quite cold places in winter, and if you have something like a comforter and need to transport from a place with a dryer, heat the comforter and send it with the patient. It is a small thing that can dramatically improve their comfort. There is no choice of where the ambulance goes. They have to go to the nearest facility, even if that facility doesn't have what's needed for treatment. Once you get in a facility, then you can be moved to a different one, until you (hopefully? eventually?) get to one that can do what is needed.
The stupidest thing that I haven't been able to get an answer for is why the health system violates some of their own policies. They have a "no scents is good sense" policy, yet the liquid soap they use in every washroom has a strong rose perfume scent. Perhaps I've been soured on roses, but I can't see why they have to have a scented product, when they ask all visitors and patients to refrain from using scented products before going to their facilities.
Finally, if you have to go from a doctor's office to an emergency room, having the doctor call ahead does seem to help reduce the time spent in the waiting room. You may have to wait just as long for treatment, but you don't get the other people coughing on you, or the presence of a television tuned to someone else's favourite program.