South County Hospital’s emergency room is open every hour of every day of every year.

At 5 a.m., when the rest of the world is just rolling over in bed, things can be busy and in full-swing at the ER at 100 Kenyon Ave., Wakefield.

While most businesses stop for lunch, graduations, Fourth of July, Christmas, the ER – as an institution and a vessel of life – never does.

Mondays, hospital officials say, are often the busiest day of the week at the South County Hospital’s ER.

Monday’s busy workload has to do with a number of factors – the tourist season, college students, patients with injuries that don’t become apparent or serious enough until the work week begins. And holiday weekends and when there’s a full moon are always busy, said ER Dr. William H. Sabina, a board-certified MD.

“The job of being an ER doctor is a cross between being an air traffic controller and a a short-order cook - you have to be able to do a number of things well at the same time,” Dr. Sabina said.

His night-time counterpart last Monday, Dr. Peter L. Willis, said the unpredictability of each shift is possibly part of the attraction of emergency medicine.

“It does keep you on your toes. Yes, I actually like not knowing what’s going to come through the door,” Willis said.

“Usually, Sunday and Monday nights are the busiest, statistically.”

Emergency medicine allows doctors and nurses to tackle a wide range of ailments and medical procedures.

“As an ER doc you do more procedures than you would otherwise.”

Dr. Sabina, for instance, has delivered 70 to 80 babies in his career - including 30 to 40 at SCH’s ER.

“Sometimes, they make it through the front door, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, we don’t have time to get them upstairs (to delivery rooms),” Dr. Sabina said.

Doctors, nurses and support personnel drawn to emergency medicine tend to find the rush of the ER invigorating and fulfilling.

ER nurses are just as likely to be men as women, according to SCH Emergency Room Manager Thomas Hoy, R.N.

“There are a high number of male nurses who gravitate to ER nursing,” Hoy said. “And some of them have (military) service experience.”

Hoy is typical of those who work at the ER.

He was employed for a number of years at Rhode Island Hospital’s Trauma Center, and decided to head south to Wakefield due to the tug of family eight years ago.

SCH’s ER opened his eyes to a different approach to medicine than the go-go-go environment of a metro trauma center. City hospitals may be a great setting for medical professionals to tackle all kinds of serious injuries and sharpen their abilities to multi-task and save people’s lives, sometimes daily.

There’s a more personal approach to medicine in Wakefield, Hoy and the doctors admit.

“We want to treat your boo-boo as though we’re your family,” Hoy said. “We’re very patient focused.”

“At South County, people are people, not just patients,” he said. “When you treat them that way, often people who come in (for treatment) are amazed,” Hoy said.

Friendliness of the staff and the level of service sets the emergency room apart from

competitors, he said.

An ER at a community hospital reflects the area it serves so the tag, “community ER,” has little to do with level of intensity and care found there.

SCHER has handled up to 130 patients a day twice in recent months. Sometimes, incoming patients have to be helped in the hallways. That was the  case when SCH’s ER treated a number of dehydration cases tied to the Blessing of the Fleet foot race on one of the hottest days of the summer. Numerous runners - 18 ambulances’ worth - suffered severe dehydration and required treatment at the ER that day and night.

There are tragedies – drownings, stabbings, auto fatalites, suicides, but there’s a softer side. Late at night, the bright lights over the ER’s non-patient areas are dimmed and the complex takes on the feel and color of a late-night slumber. You’re as likely to hear laughter there as you are crying.

This past Monday, Dr. Sabina was four hours into a 12-13 hour shift. He sat directly across from a bank of rooms used for psychiatric intakes and pointed out that recent changes in the way Rhode Island treats patients in need of observation, commitment, drug treatment and psychological problems have left the ER’s rooms full.

Until earlier this summer, Butler Hospital in Providence handled most of the intakes but then the state bid the essential service out and awarded it to a center that doesn’t have its own emergency beds.

“We’ve had several patients sitting down here in the ER for three days, no four days, due to the changes,” he said. “It used to be they’d be held overnight, now it’s days at time.”

At one point Monday afternoon, six of the 15 available beds – more than a third – were occupied by those caught up in the state charges. And the hospital provides a “sitter,” an employee who keeps a constant eye on these charges, watching for problems, both medical and behavorial.

South County Hospital Psychiatric Outreach Manager Sharon DeLuca had her hands full as she conducted at least six intake examinations herself Monday. On Monday - during 24 hours - SCH’s ER handled 12 cases falling into the psychiatric classification.

And while television hits such as “ER” have brought emergency medicine into the homes and the consciousness of millions of viewers worldwide, Dr. Sabina said there are a few areas in popular portrayals that are off base.

Test results, X-rays and other data isn’t available in a matter of seconds or minutes as they are on television episodes. Sometimes, it takes days.

“In reality, laboratory values can take 45 minutes or an hour to come back, CAT scans can take a lot longer. Things don’t generally happen as quickly as they do on the show,” Dr. Sabina said.

“And the amount of surgery you see on the shows. We don’t do open heart surgery or brain surgery in the ER.”

What the ER’s doctors and nurses do is help stop the bleeding, figure out causes to medical problems and listen to the patients.

One patient, Julie Kiernan of Narragansett, summed up what the ER provides for her and the community it serves.

She suffers from a litany of health problems ranging from respiratory ailments, liver damage, ulcers on her feet and a nasty gash to her scalp due to a fall Monday that required 36 surgical staples to close.

“These are wonderful people - I’ve gotten to know everybody here,” she said, referring to her ER visits that come about once a month. She admitted she’s on a first-name basis with many of the doctors, nurses and members of the support staff at South County Hospital.

“I think (SCH’s ER) is great - I don’t know what I’d do without it - they are like family."            

ABOUT THE SERIES: This is the first in a periodic series called “Day in the Life.” We’ll take a longer look at the people, institutions and businesses that give South County its unique character. Send suggestions to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it