Patients lie on the bed

Question

Please check out the following sentences.

(1) When I was young, I often went to hospital with mom.

(2) I saw many peole/patients lie on the bed in the emergency room.

(3) They looked so poor that I hoped I could help them.

KrisBlueNZ · Accepted Answer

contiluo(1) When I was young, I often went to hospital with mom.

(a) You would normally write "with MY mom". I would only say "with mom" when I'm SPEAKING to someone who knows me and my mother, so "mom" is someone they're familiar with. In other cases, including writing, you should say "with MY mom", or "with MY MOTHER" ("mom" is kind of slang, not generally used in formal writing).

(b) "I often went to hospital" is correct, but a bit clumsy. I'm not sure of the context, but I'd suggest something like "When I was young, my mother often took me to the local hospital". (Change "the local" to something more appropriate if you can).

contiluo(2) I saw many peole/patients lie on the bed in the emergency room.

(a) THE BED is probably wrong, since there are probably lots of BEDS in the emergency room.

(b) "LIE on" is wrong. You need to say what the people/patients are DOING. I think the name for this is the CONTINUOUS form. They were LYING on the beds.

(c) PEOPLE/PATIENTS the choice is yours. It's obvious that they're patients, because they're lying on beds in a hospital. I would use PEOPLE because it emphasises the fact that these patients are PEOPLE - sick people, or injured people, people with problems. PATIENT is more of a clinical word, one that a doctor or nurse would use. It's a bit IMPERSONAL.

My suggestion: "I saw many people LYING on BEDS in the emergency room."

See I said LYING ON BEDS, not LYING ON THE BEDS. This is partly for brevity but partly for correctness. This is really hard to explain, I'm afraid. It's because you are INTRODUCING several new ideas with that sentence - that is, the people, the beds, and the emergency room. There is only one emergency room, so you're right to say THE emergency room, but the beds and the people are being introduced in that sentence, so you wouldn't use "THE" with them in THAT sentence. In the next sentence, you WOULD say "THE people", "THE beds", etc. I can't explain it any better than that, I'm sorry.

contiluo(3) They looked so poor that I hoped I could help them.

(a) POOR generally means "lacking money". POORLY means sick; maybe that's the right word. There is probably a more appropriate word. Looking up POORLY on thesaurus.com gives many results. Here are some suggestions for you to choose from: afflicted, bedraggled, bilious, debilitated, decrepit, exhausted, faint, feeble, FRAIL, ill, INFIRM, low, mangy, neglected, ragged, shabby, sickly, STRICKEN, unwell, WEAK, wilted, worn-out.

(b) HOPED is not the best word here, unless you're a doctor. You should use WISHED. If I HOPE I can help someone, it means that I will try to help, and HOPE or WISH to be successful. But if I'm just looking at them, and I know I'm UNABLE to help them, it's a WISH, not a HOPE. This is a subtle difference between the two words.

"I HOPE this helps you" means I've tried to help, and I hope/wish that I am successful.

"I WISH I COULD help you" means I know there's nothing I can do, but I WISH I could do something.

So I suggest "They looked so poorly that I WISHED I could help them", but probably with POORLY replaced with one of the thesaurus suggestions from (a).

Patients lie on the bed

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