What to Expect During Your Visit to the Emergency Department
May 13, 2025
By: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
Categories: Emergency, Emergency Medicine, Healthy Living
Tags: Emergency Care
When visiting one of our emergency department(s) at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), it’s important to understand what you can expect during your visit or admission. Not only will this help to set your expectations and better understand your care, but it will also help our emergency department run as efficiently as possible.
Before You Visit the Emergency Department
You should visit our Bixler Trauma & Emergency Center or Emergency Center – Northeast when experiencing severe symptoms that include trouble breathing, chest pain, sudden numbness or weakness, severe bleeding that won’t stop, dizziness or fainting, sudden confusion and significant head injury. In any situation where you suspect a life-threatening medical emergency, you should call 911 immediately.
If you’re experiencing mild symptoms, such as a cough, fever, headache, mild-to-moderate pain, minor wounds and other non-life-threatening conditions, we urge you to reach out to your primary care provider or visit one of our three Urgent Care Centers in Tallahassee. At urgent care, you’ll receive treatment from a provider who can elevate your treatment to the emergency room if necessary. Urgent care centers are also typically less expensive, have shorter wait times and have lower insurance co-pays than emergency departments.
Knowing where to go for treatment helps you, your children or loved ones receive the most appropriate, efficient and cost-effective care possible. It also helps keep our emergency centers and urgent care centers operating as smoothly and quickly as possible.
When You Arrive
Upon arriving at our Bixler Trauma & Emergency Center or Emergency Center - Northeast, you should immediately proceed to the check-in kiosk near the front entrance. At check-in, you will be asked for personal information and the reason for your visit. This will help us create your chart in our system. After you check-in, you will be asked to wait in our lobby.
Triage
A triage nurse will assess the severity of your condition as soon as possible. A member of our team will check your vital signs (i.e., heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature, etc.), and the triage nurse will ask you a series of questions about your symptoms and the nature of your condition or injury. They may also ask questions about your medical history or family history.
This helps us to prioritize and treat the most severe and life-threatening conditions first. Because of this, you may notice that patients who arrived later than you are treated before you. For example, someone who arrives experiencing symptoms of a stroke will likely receive prioritized care over someone who arrives experiencing a fever and a cough.
If you’re at our Emergency Center – Northeast and it’s determined you need more intensive care, you may be transported by ambulance to our Bixler Trauma & Emergency Center, or the main hospital for admission.
Evaluation
Following triage, you will be asked to wait in the lobby again for an available assessment room or you may be taken directly to an assessment room to receive an evaluation from a physician or emergency provider. Again, the speed at which this happens depends on several factors that include the severity of your condition, the severity of others’ conditions and the number of patients receiving treatment at a given time.
Here, your nurse and a provider will ask you further questions about your symptoms and may give you a physical examination or order additional testing to confirm or rule out a diagnosis.
Testing
Following your examination, your doctor may order additional testing. This could include blood tests, urinalysis or imaging, such as a CT Scan. These tests help your care team to better diagnose or rule out a condition or may give them information that helps to guide your treatment.
There will be a waiting period to receive testing. We ask that you wait in the designated area for your particular test until you are called.
Results Pending
If you require testing, you’ll be asked to wait in our results pending lounge. When we receive your test results, your care provider or a nurse will speak with you about the next steps of your treatment or your discharge instructions.
This could take up to a few hours depending on the test, your condition and the number of patients in the ER at the time.
Treatment and Our Pod System
At Bixler Trauma and Emergency Center, we use what’s called the Pod System. This is a way to organize our Emergency Department into self-contained units with their own staff. This helps to reduce wait times, expedite and streamline care, and reduce the length of stay for our patients.
You may notice in your pod that your care rotates through several different emergency team members and services. This is to assess your condition or injury and provide all the care you need as quickly as possible.
Reevaluation, Observation and Admission
Your condition may be reevaluated after initial treatment and further test results are received by your provider. Please be sure to let your care team know about any new or worsening symptoms during your stay.
At this point, you may be admitted to the hospital for further care or you may be placed in our observation unit for further evaluation. Our observation unit is located in our Main Hospital down the hall from the Bixler Trauma & Emergency Center and is meant for patients who no longer need emergency care, but should still be observed before admission to the hospital or discharge from the ER.
Discharge and Follow-Up Care
If no further emergency care is needed and you’re not being admitted to the hospital, your provider will determine if and when you can be discharged. When you are discharged, you will receive printed instructions on home care and follow-up.
If you have any questions about your care, discharge or follow-up, please let your care team know before you are discharged. This will help you to get the information you need as quickly as possible. Be sure to notify your primary care provider (if you have one) that you were seen and treated in the Emergency Department.
If you do not have a primary care provider, you can find one at TMH.ORG/PrimaryCare.
We hope this helps you to better understand your care at our emergency centers. For more information about emergency services at TMH, visit TMH.ORG/Emergency.
