I'm not an expert in this area, but having gone to the emergency room three times in 36 hours a few days ago, I feel like we've done some research. We went twice in the morning and once in the evening. On another occasion, we went mid-day on a Saturday. On our recent excusions we went on a weekend day (Sunday) and on a week day (Monday).
Now if someone is bleeding or needs urgent care, this won't work. But all three of our recent situations involved swelling, which would have to decrease before putting on a cast. So we waited overnight on two instances to see if the pain had subsided and to allow the swelling to decrease.
Our results: early morning is definitely the best time to go to the emergency room. We were there by 9:30 am on Sunday and 7:30 am on Monday. In each case it took us around two hours to be seen, x-rayed and casted in one instance.
I'm attributing this partly due to the fact that the doctors possibly hadn't completed rounds yet thereby not initiating x-rays yet, so there was not a waiting time for x-rays. And we walked right in to the examining room both times.
Not the case with the evening time. Lots of people, being seen in the order of their severity. Since ours was not a life-threatening injury, we ended up at the bottom of the list. It took about four hours.
The mid-day Saturday trip took longest of all - about 5 hours. But again, the situation was more complicated than just a sprain or break.
This is, of course, our experience in our town. Your experience may not be the same where you live, but it seems that some of the same principles might apply. Anyway, just thought you might benefit from our research! LOL!
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