So many drunk University of South Carolina students are being transported to the emergency room during home football games that stretchers line the hallways of Palmetto Health Baptist, emergency services are strained and drunken antics slow nurses who are trying to tend to the truly sick.
“They try to run away, fight people, pee in the corner,” said a nurse at Palmetto Health Baptist. “It’s been that way the whole time I’ve worked there.”
“We do get violent USC students,” another nurse at Palmetto Health Baptist said. “It just takes away from other patients.”
Nurses and the EMT voiced frustration over an alleged police practice they say further overloads emergency rooms. Officers from USC’s police department and the Columbia Police Department catch underage students drinking and give them the option to either go to the hospital or to jail, according to four nurses and an EMT.
