A day in the life of an ER nurse...

[PACU queen]

I know there is never a "typical" day I am sure in the ER, but I was wondering .....

What is a day usually like in the ER?

What all diagnoses's do you see?

How many patients do you see? (pt./nurse ratio)

How long was your orientation?

What qualities/skills do you feel are important?

Thanks

[teeituptom, BSN, RN]

important qualities - you cannot be a lazy er nurse, this is my biggest hate in life. Where I work, no one completes charting, half of the nurses don't even bother checking temperatures - there are more busy brownnosing the doctor to try to get a chance to suture a patient later in the night (out of our scope in NM). I dont know how many patients I walk in on weekly that don't even have thier basic needs met let alone critical ones - am I alone, why doesn't my employer punish these people and how come when I write up deadly mistakes, it is pointed out at every meeting that I am the town cryer - god forbid I wrote an incident report on a nurse that left a tourniquet on a patient for 4 hours.

What patient or patients family member wouldnt complain about a tourniquet left on for so long. Really its hard to find someone who doesnt start complaining before you even get the IV started. And Ive even been padding all people with Webril before putting the tourniquet on for comfort. They still complain