Where there’s a will there is a way. Just ask 32-year old, Nigerian native, Dr. Foyekemi Ikyaator, who opened Life Savers Emergency Room, a stand-alone full service emergency room, in Houston, Texas, KUT.org reports.
Dr. Ikyaator created Life Savers ER to meet the growing medical needs of the Houston community. While not attached to a hospital, the facility is equipped with radiology equipment, an onsite laboratory and pharmacy.
The ER prides itself in no waiting lines for labs to be sent or processed or even to be seen by a doctor.
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“In emergency medicine you don’t pick your patients. You don’t get to decide who walks in the door,” Dr. Ikyaator tells KUT during a “In Black America” segment.
Impatient with the “clogged” system of the waiting room, Dr Ikyaator was determined to make a difference.
“As far as what led me to [start Life Savers ER]; I worked in a few ERs in Houston and often I’d get to work and there are 15-20 patients in the waiting room waiting on me,” Ikyaator explains. “There are patients in the ER waiting to be admitted; there are patients who are admitted and can’t get a bed upstairs so they’re taking up space.”
“You just start seeing the repetitiveness of the clogged system where you can’t get patients out of the ER, and you can’t get patients [waiting in] the waiting room inside the ER to get treatment,” she revealed, adding that often she would try and pull waiting room patients aside to begin the work up.
“You don’t know if there’s a heart attack waiting in the room, and you’re responsible for everyone that comes in there,” she states.
Dr. Ikyaator now directs Life Savers Emergency Room where she can be more hands on with her patients and promote the kind of medicine and medical attention she believes is necessary in communities.
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