The Waiting Room by Peter Nicks (review)

The Waiting Room is “a character-driven documentary film,” that goes “behind the doors” of the emergency room (ER) of Highland Hospital, a large public hospital in Oakland, California, that cares for largely uninsured patients.¹ The film follows closely the experience of four patients as they move from the waiting room through their admission into the ER, discharge, and their exit interview with billing services. These experiences are interspersed with vignettes with some of the more than 240 people in the waiting room in the single twenty-four-hour period captured by the film. Through these encounters, The Waiting Room documents how a diverse group of Americans experience life without health insurance.

The Waiting Room is a very compelling documentary that would work well in undergraduate courses on the U.S. health care system. The patient vignettes explore the varied reasons why patients go to the ER, raising familiar themes in recent health care history. For example, we see how safety-net ERs like Highland Hospital are playing a critical primary care function as numerous uninsured patients go to the ER every day to get their medications for diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic conditions filled. We also meet several informed patient-consumers in the ER who have searched online about their symptoms before they arrive in the ER. The film also engages complex health and social policy issues like the incapacity of the current health care and social service systems to support patients with the dual diagnosis of mental illness and chemical dependency, the financial constraints of making reproductive choices in the face of pending infertility, and the impact of illegal immigration on the self-employed and its health care consequences.

The Waiting Room also follows and captures the diversity of the staff that work in the ER. Much of the focus is on C.J., the triage nurse who evaluates each patient as they enter the waiting room. We also meet several physicians, nurses, social workers, and the unit coordinator, who is responsible for maintaining the flow of patients between the waiting room and the ER by managing the beds in the ER and elsewhere in the hospital. We also encounter the staff in billing as they advise the patients on whether they qualify for free county aid or will to have to pay out of pocket for the care they have just received.

The frustrations of patients and their caregivers at spending hours in the waiting room, and of the staff at not having enough beds and other resources comes through clearly in the film. The filmmakers, however, have gone to great lengths to showcase the camaraderie, empathy, and humor among the patients, caregivers, and staff in the waiting room. (C.J. steals the show for her warmth, humor, and straightforward honesty.)

In addition to the film, The Waiting Room Storytelling Project, which can be found on the film’s website, “is a social media and community engagement initiative that aims to improve the patient experience through the collection and sharing of digital content.” ² The website includes about twenty short clips that further document the needs of underserved patients at Highland Hospital. These could serve as a useful teaching resource as they feature patients, caregivers, and staff discussing issues like access to care, chronic disease, and the impact of violence on health. I heartily recommend The Waiting Room, particularly for use in undergraduate courses on the recent history of the U.S. health care system.