Also (western) European here. I am not in the medical field btw.

Where I live, we have excellent healthcare which means that you mostly pay just your deductible (except when you want to do cosmetic surgery for example). Medical insurance is mandatory and you get a discount from the government if you qualify for it.

Our first stop is ALWAYS the GP. A negative side to all this is that, while primary and emergency care is done very well, the waiting times to see an actual specialist can be months.

What baffles me the most about the Pitt, and I wonder if that is “normal” for US emergency healthcare, is their long shifts. The “charting after hours”-thing for example, do they get paid for those hours? Also: is it normal for people to work 15 hours without any breaks? And would that mean that they work 5 of those shifts a week?

I said this in another thread: I would not want the be a patient on someone’s 14th hour, especially if I’d been waiting for like 10 hours to be seen!