Descriptive Essay On A Waiting Room

The Waiting Room incorporates the observational mode trait of long takes to illustrate the chaos that occurs in the waiting room and behind the scenes of the hospital. Moreover, the long takes in the film provide a glimpse of each patients’ background story and allows people to express their concerns instead of revealing character individuality, which may help the viewer infer why the health care system in America is failing. The long takes help decipher, “The body language, and eye contact, the intonation and tone of the voices, the pauses and “empty” time that gives the encounter the sense of concrete, lived reality” (Nicholas 176), that depicts each patients’ harsh reality of what it is like living with no health insurance. For example, there is a scene where a little girl and her mom follow a nurse into a room, the camera follows them and the viewer can see the

I keep seeing people being dismissed from the ship because they are clear of any disease, and I think to myself how lucky they are. We have been sitting here for hours waiting and waiting to be checked, so we can be sent on our way. The health inspectors start walking over to the steerage and relief drifts over me. Finally the health inspectors are finished checking us, and we are being dismissed from the ship. My brothers and I are motioned by an officer in a uniform, to walk down the gangplank to the main building. We are inside the building now and the officers are passing out numbered identity tags that we are supposed to wear. The commotion is overwhelming, as people start to pour into the building. We just now got cleared from the Baggage Room and are now on our way to have our medical and legal inspections. As we are waiting in line on the winding stairs, I look up and see doctors observing us from the second floor. They are looking for anyone that appears to have any health issues, like trouble walking or

The documentary The Waiting Room is about a safety-net hospital located in Oakland, California. In the film, director Peter Nix follows patients, doctors, and staff throughout a typical day. Furthermore, the film displays how the staff is overworked, and how the American health care system is affecting millions of uninsured patients who try to cope with injury and disease. The film utilizes techniques from the observational mode such as long takes, crisis structure, and documenting unplanned everyday experiences to convey the cruel realities of Americans seeking hope and treatment.

In the next stanza, the poet describes “A figure walking towards cloaked in blue/ Beeping/ Tubes/ Needles.” The poem addresses the routinely and monotonous aspect of being in the hospital for long periods of time. It is a critique of the biomedical model and how the hospital system is created where patients are tended to by multiple doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. The patients and healthcare professionals are unable to form a relationship that consists of what Kleinman describes as “empathetic witnessing” (Kleinman). Therefore, detachment between patient and health workers is developed and established, to which the patient cannot recognize or know the people assisting them. In addition, Grealy discusses this in her earliest accounts and appointments with doctors. She states that there is a layer of “condescension” and is an “endemic in the medical

The documentary The Waiting Room, is about a safety-net hospital called Highland Hospital located in Oakland, California. In the film, director Peter Nix follows patients, doctors, and staff all throughout a typical day at the hospital. Furthermore, the film displays how the staff is overworked, and how the American health care system is affecting millions of uninsured patients who try to cope with injury and disease. The film utilizes techniques from the observational mode like: long takes, crisis structure, and everyday experiences that unfold spontaneously to transmit the cruel realities of uninsured patients who go to Highland Hospital seeking hope and treatment.

There was an eerie silence as she walked down the corridor. Click clack click clack.. The sound of her footsteps echoed off the walls. She glanced out the window, the clouds were rolling in a deep black front. The trees were contorting from the wind, flashes of lightning illuminate her face. Those soft, caring eyes, and gorgeous brown hair. The epitome of perfection. She quickly pulls herself away from the window, she can't be distracted. Not now. Patient 13 had escaped and she was the only staff in. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. Time was running out, she had to find the patient before the storm hit. She had checked every floor except for this one; floor #2. Something seemed different about this floor to her. There was something off. There was no humming of equipment like there would normally be. Just silence. Rooms 210-224 were empty and untouched. All the sheets

My legs are shaking with pain, but I need to know where I am and what strange things lie outside of that door way. Slowly I am making my way there, I hear people having a conversation just outside. I haven’t a clue what they are saying, it seems to be in some odd language. Finally I’m at the door. Terrified, I grab the knob and start to open it. It squeaks when I swing it open. In the hall I see no one, just white walls with white tile. “What the,” I say to out loud. I could have sworn I heard someone. My eye catches my room number, 387, it has my name on it. I look right and left, but see nothing expect florescent lighting and shut doors. I go to the door across from mine and try to open it. Locked, that’s odd. I try the next one, locked once again. I keep going, now at room 365 I give the knob a turn and it actually comes open. I hesitantly wander into the area. It looks the same as mine, minus the painting on one of the walls. It is an extremely abnormal painting. It depicts an out of the ordinary creature. “Why would this be in a hospital?” I whisper to myself.

The rooms were confined to themselves by a large metal door with a small slot about 5 feet from the floor that could only be opened from the outside. The walls were once a brilliant white, but now filled with the scratch marks and blood stains from the ones before me. The room stench of urine, most likely from the other patients. All there was in the room was a small cot with a mattress so thin, it almost looked as if it was a thin piece of plywood. As I laid there strapped to my bed by leather restraints that were made to “protect” me from myself, I kept pondering on the question “what did I do to deserve to be locked up in a place like this?” Then I remember my crime, and smile.

“Right this way,” the nurse ahead of me was prompting me to a brightly lit hall that was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t help but be terrified by the sights and sounds around me: people chattering, machines methodically beeping, gurneys rushing past. It was my first time in a hospital and my eyes frantically searched each room looking for any trace of my father. She stopped suddenly and I turned to the bed in front of me but I could not comprehend what I saw. At such a young age, I idolized my father; I had never seen him so vulnerable. Seeing him laying in a hospital bed unconscious, surrounded by wires and tubes was like witnessing Superman encounter kryptonite. My dad’s car accident not only made him a quadriplegic, but also crippled

I awoke with the sound of beeps in the distance. My eyes fluttered, eyelashes blocking my small spot of a view. In the corner, I could see my mom, her head in her hands, shaking slowly from tears. I gradually moved my head to the left. The room was bright, with white floors and bleached walls. There were multiple carts full of medical supplies right next to me. While scanning the room, I could hear my mother gasp and run out of the door. Moments later, a tall lanky guy walked into in the room. He was wearing scrubs with little stars and a light blue stethoscope was dangling from

I found myself in another room too small for the amount of people in it. The stale smell that clung to the latex of medical equipment offered a resurfacing of bitter inconclusive memories. White coats with clipboards shined lights in my eyes and prodded at my body. They rattled off the questions that had become all too familiar to me and I recited the same lines I have been for the past 13 years...

In the movies the only hospitals that were like this were the- the- . Mental institutions. And they only took they crazy people there, so I immediately started looking for an escape route. I couldn’t stay here, I didn’t belong here, I’m not crazy. In fact I even got an A on one of my test at Pency Prep. If I were crazy I wouldn’t- “Calm down Mr. Caulfield, your heart rate is quite high” I looked over to see this typical doctor, he had bald hair, thick rimmed circle eyeglasses, and a suit shirt and tie under his long white lab coat. “ There were two other nurses in the room, one of them was tall skinny and really resembled someone off of a movie. The other nurse was short and plump, and had on too much makeup, she reminded me of a blueberry. “why am I here, where am

I had been instructed to introduce myself to the patients, so I started with the first room and began to work my way down the long and dimly lit hallway. Popping my head into each room, I quickly muttered my name and half of a greeting before rushing over to the next one. Many of the patients in the unit didn’t acknowledge me, and for that, I was grateful. It wasn’t until I had gotten to the last room, in fact, that I was even met with a

My hospital bed was ice cold and the bleak and empty white walls depressed me as the uncomforting thought that I would have to stay here for maybe another week brought tears to my eyes. The usual and oppressive smell of disinfectant lingered in the room as I recalled that night in my head, trying to convince myself it wasn’t my fault, as I had done everyday since the accident. It was the day everything changed and my life was turned upside down. Forever.

Flashing red and blue lights accompanied by an alarming siren in the distance is signaled when the double doors of the emergency room burst open. Pushed by several nurses, doctors, and other medical staff, a lone hospital stretcher with a bloody, wounded patient flies through the medical center towards the doors to the operating room. This image is what generally comes to mind when you think about an emergency room. Many people believe that the hospital’s emergency room is a dark and scary place. While this is true, the common misconception is that the emergency room is a place clear of humor, when in reality humor is present, even necessary, for many reasons. Many television shows, like the show ER, are based in the setting of the