@ Kenny
Yes, there is such a thing (even though it may not be known as Black Friday in every hospital). In fact at our hospital in Johannesburg we used to increase the shift number and stand-by people just because of booze-related incidents particularly over New Year. Here are some of the classics I remember:
1) The chief trauma surgeon was donated a brand-new Ford Falcon with all the emergency kit you can think of. It was the lead car in the Emergency Response 'fleet' and represented the latest in technology at the time. One New Year's Eve in 1998 or 1999 he drove out to a suburb in response to a stabbed chest call. The victim was lying on the pavement bleeding liberally. Instead of helping, the locals in the blocks of flats on either side were leaning out of their windows hurling bricks and flower pots down onto the response car in their drunken stupor. The car was extensively damaged and the victim's treatment was delayed. (What really annoys me about this incident is that the emergency vehicles all have red lights in SA, so these cars can't be mistaken for police vehicles, which are regular targets).
2) The sharps bin water-shoot. In every casualty cubicle there is a stretcher, a wall-mounted cabinet with various dressing equipment such as gloves, bandages, sprays, and a side tray with needles, syringes and basic antiseptic lotions. On the floor, there is a rigid yellow tub with a small tamper-proof aperture into which 'sharps' such as needles and scalpels go when used. These tubs are then incinerated. Every year, without fail, over the festive season, there is at least one drunk who climbs off his trolley and pisses in the sharps bin and all over the floor. Some of them just unzip, dangle the johnny over the trolley side and piss freely all over the place. One guy even asked me for a smoke immediately afterwards!
3) The in-hospital brawl. It is not enough that people get drunk and get into fights with bottles, knives, (sometimes even guns) and then end up in hospital. No, they have to pick a fight with another drunk patient at the hospital, or his relatives, or a member of staff. I've had a drunk patient push me around quite hard, and there was nothing I could do. It happens to everyone: nurses, radiographers, porters and doctors.
4) The X-factor. This is also known as the Drunken Choir, or the Squealing Weasels. The game here is to try to get seen to before a more seriously-injured patient by feigning a more life-threatening injury. How do you do that? Easy. You scream, yodel, do a Michael Jackson "eeee-heeee" while pulling a face resembling a bulldog chewing on a wasp. Of course, if you have competition from the drunk in the next cubicle, you gotta turn the volume up. This can go on for a few hours (or less, if the trauma chief comes in, has had a gutsful and roars SHUT THE FUKUP !!)
Yes, And let me not go into the delights of cleaning up other people's puke that has run into the sensitive electronics of the X-ray machine, or the sh1t-skid on the edge of the trolley mattress where the guy was so drunk he didn't even care where he relieved himself. And if they are bleeding, I promise you there is one smell you never get used to: blood and alcohol mixed. It is dire.
So spare a thought for us here in the hospitals where the 'festive season' is the blackest of seasons.
