One of my old friends was a doctor for 40 years and his wife was a nurse for about the same time ... they often reminded us that if you walk into an emergency room to get help with something, even if you are bleeding, broken bones, you aren't that bad and you're automatically triaged to a lesser level because you actually walked in and could stand on two feet. If you walk in with a headache and a cough and you've felt shitty for four days, you still aren't that bad, because in their eyes, you still have a long way to go before you get worse.

As soon as they wheel in your lifeless unconscious body and you have no pulse, that is when they class it as an emergency.

It doesn't mean that they'll ignore you outright .... this is the reason why we sometimes end up waiting for hours in the waiting room. If you go in with whatever complaint you got and it's a slow day and no one is being wheeled in dead, doctors and nurses are freely available to look at you and treat you and take their time ... but sometimes, multiple events happen, two three or more people are wheeled in gurneys and they're in real terrible emergencies and people with coughs or headaches will be made to wait for hours while more severe cases are dealt with.