Table 2 Additional Representative Quotes

Functional recovery

“I hurt, I want you to heal me.”

“They gave me equipment so I could get around and maintain my lifestyle and gradually get back to where I was.”

“To help you, help restore your vitality. And it’s true, if you don’t think that you’re going to be able to carry on with your daily activities and all the projects that you do, you think well you’re just really not participating fully in life anymore.”

“You want them to be able to make sure that you can be as active as possible for as long as possible.”

Mental health and anxiety

“Otherwise, someone is going to worry themselves to death maybe over nothing. So, I realize patience in this case is a virtue, but sometimes I think when you’re so antsy and worried some reassuring words might help.”

“Of course, as we get older we think of, oh my gosh, my friend died when she was only 60, she was only 58, this woman is 73, so we’re scared, we’re scared of crap, we really are and I don’t know what the answer is.”

“Knowledge is really the most important thing. I would rather know, the suspense is worse than whatever news is going to be dished out, albeit you don’t want bad news but to wait around and to wonder and wonder and wonder.”

“I was really very down temporarily about this. Thinking, oh, you know, this is never going to get better.”

Interpersonal effects of health on quality of life

“Well I think if you’re ill or injured to the point where you’re isolated, of course it affects your social relationships, particularly if you don’t have a live-in companion.”

“But to be honest with you I was less concerned about that than I was about how whatever was going on with me would impact my wife, because she depends on me, okay? I have been married to the same woman for 40 years, my anniversary was this past Saturday. I was concerned about, you know, I can’t get sick now.”

“I’m going to be 69 next month. I’m not 20, but I can, you know, if I want to go swim with my grandkids I can do that. If I want to bicycle with them I can do that, if I want to pick them up and toss them around I have the strength to do that.”

Individual experience of health and quality of life

“When you go there, it reminds you that you’re not a kid anymore, and everything isn’t self-healing and quickly done, and maybe in your imagination. That you in fact are not what you used to be. And the emergency room reminds you of that, and you don’t want to go back.”

“What you experience on the outside affects you everywhere, it really does. It’s difficult to deal with sometimes because you tell yourself why is this happening?”

The ED is not the appropriate setting to address quality of life

“Would I expect an emergency room physician to be addressing those? They don’t even know me. They should be addressing the problem at hand and then send me off to my primary care physician for followup. That’s where it should be addressed.”

“I don’t think it’s an emergency room issue. I think if you have a social issue, it’s an issue. I don’t think an emergency room impacts it in any way.”