How long do acute traumas stay in your ED?

I posted something on the SICU board about handling trauma resuscitation in the ICU rather than the ED and I'm beginning to think that what I'm thinking is "different" is actually the norm.

In the ED I used to work in, it was not at all unusual to keep a trauma patient in the trauma bay for an entire 12 hours or more. They'd come in, get the initial work-up, x-rays, ct, labs etc. and then stay put to get fluids, blood, etc. Neurosurg would hold them there to put in a ventriculostomy, Trauma surg would want to start all their lines (not just the emergent ones....) and all sorts of stuff would go on. Like I said, I frequently stayed one-on-one with a patient for an entire shift.

The way we worked things was, in the critical care area of the ED, a team of 2 nurses and 1 tech would have three ICU-type patients and three-four telly-type patients. So, if one RN is tied up with the unstable trauma (often having the tech in there to help or get her things), that leaves 1 RN with two ICU pts, and 3-4 telly patients. This seems like a bad thing to me.

So, is this typical of where you are? It always seemed like the best run traumas were the ones that were SO sick they needed to go to the OR within minutes of arriving. In and out. But, if you didn't need emergent surgery, you hung out in the trauma bay until you were "stable" or until another trauma came in and you HAD to be moved to make room.