common situations encountered in emergency room

Wow! You're asking for a huge amount of info here! We see everything from ear aches to gun shot wounds. I might have one pt with chest pain, another with belly pain and then a Class I trauma. You chart as you go. If it's a code or a truama we have scribes that do all the writing. As for meds....that would vary depending on the pt and could include anything from tylenol to morpine or Avelox. Spend some time shadowing in the ER to see how it flows. You can't possible learn it before you get there! Best of luck to you.

EVERYTHING is common in the ER. Every kind of patient; every kind of presentation, every sort of acuity. Anything that EMS encounters or that can come in themselves, we see it. We even get patients from elsewhere in the hospital. Chest pain during a procedure? Send them to ER. Syncope while waiting to check in for surgery? Send 'em to ER. We're the ones that sort it out, make some sense of it, and send the patients where they need to be. If fact, in Hebrew the ER is 'hadar miyun' - the Triage Dept. We're the hospital's 'handyman'; and we do it all pretty well, too!

Some charting is on the fly, some we catch up later. Can't let it get far behind, though.

If you look at some other threads like 'what do you do in the ER' and such, you'll see plenty of responses to this.

Every ER has its own flavor of pain meds that are pretty common. In my ER, we hand out Lortab/Percocet like candy, or IV Dilaudid. So knowing your narcotics in general is a start.

Cardiac meds are also flavor of the month, currently ours are the old faithfuls: morphine, nitro, heparin bolus and drip, and integrilin. Support for hypotension, Dopamine. Arrhythmias: amiodarone, lidocaine.

Almost every truama with open wounds gets a gram of Ancef and a tetanus. Pneumonia is a protocol, usually 3 grams of Unasyn. We give a lot of Rocephin as well.

But remember, there are regional differences, different groups of doctors get to using different combinations. Thoses are just what we use alot

Be prepared. Common situation: "I have stomach pain and I vomited 100 times. When is lunch? Can I get a sandwich before lunch?"

is there alot of charting to be done? like charting after the admission?

We do our charting electronically but we use a different system than the inpatient system so we have to double chart the last vitals, I&O, IV starts, Foley, and nurse review any orders that went into the inpatient system before admit. PIA if you ask me...but if we don't at least double chart we don't chart at all...LOL

Trauma's and codes are still paper for ease and more portable (going to CT etc)...

In the ED you are paid for what is charted not what is ordered, so if you don't chart that Foley start the dept can't bill for it even if it was ordered...this is a biggy with management...if your IV gtt was charted as a push you get less money for it...this drives a lot of charting requests from my management team.

thanks larry. The problem with the hospital that i am doing my clinical doesnt have advance technology to chart.

I recommend buying some books about ER nursing. Your questions are very broad and are the same ones I had when making the transition into the ER setting. Its good to want to be prepared, theres just no way you're gonna get all your answers on here.
Buy a book.
One of my faves is the CEN Review Manual. Even if you don't plan on taking the CEN for years and years it has a boat-load of wonderful information, and the rationales to explain WHY you do certain things.
There are lots of other ones too... I have at least 5 or so. Do some research and find one that seems to cover what you're looking for.