When you need to visit Emergency please bring:
- Ontario Health card and another piece of photo ID
- Children need their birth certificate and Ontario Health Card
- Medications you are taking (including herbal remedies)
Your visit
If you come in on our own, you will take a number and go to the waiting room to wait for the triage nurse to call you. Whether you arrive by ambulance or on your own, a Triage Nurse will ask you several questions and perform a few simple procedures to assess your condition. This will help them decide how urgently you need to be seen by a doctor. This process is known as Triage. Patients are treated based on how urgent their health care needs are in this order:
- Life threatening - cardiac arrest, major trauma, unconsciousness or non-responsive, limb amputation
- Emergent - head injury, spinal cord injury, heart attack, high fever in infant less than 3 months old
- Urgent - dislocated shoulder, asthma, seizure, vomiting and diarrhea in toddler, leg fracture
- Less urgent - fractured wrist, ear infection, foreign body in eye, back pain, headache
- Not urgent - constipation, minor cuts or bumps, sore throat, dressing changes, prescription renewal
Worst Comes First
Patients are seen by a doctor in order of need. Emergency care is not provided on a first-come first-served basis. We can’t give you a definite length of time you will wait, and we can’t give out wait times over the phone. Your wait time will depend on:
- How urgently you need care
- How urgently others in the Emergency Department need care, including those who arrive by ambulance
- How busy the Emergency Department is when you arrive
- Once you have been assessed it may be necessary for you to have further tests (e.g. X-rays or blood tests) or be seen by a specialist.
What else can I do?
- If you have a family doctor, go to your family doctor. Your doctor knows your family history and can provide you with the best follow-up care. Your community pharmacist may offer advice on non-urgent medical matters.
- Make sure you and your family have enough prescribed medication, especially for weekends and holidays.
- If you have a chronic illness, keep your regularly scheduled appointments with your doctor. Ask your doctor what change in your condition would require medical attention.
Access Ontario Wait Times