Nurse/Patient ratio in the ED?

Specialties Emergency

Published

I'm looking to go into ED nursing and I was wondering what is the typical nurse to patient ratio on a relatively busy day. The program I interviewed for mentioned 7-8 patients and I thought it was a lot, especially in ED. Is that a lot? Or am I being unrealistic?

Specializes in ED, Clinical Documentation.

10:1 and no lab tech, sometimes a tech for ekgs/property lists. And we do our own respiratory treatments. And make some antibiotics. Crazy.

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Specializes in Emergency, Med/Surg, Vascular Access.

For those of you that have ratios that are 7:1 or greater, what is your patients' average LOS in your ER? Just curious. Ours is probably 4.5-6 hrs, something like that.

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Specializes in ER.

I think patients should be assigned based on acuity rather than volume, especially in the ED.

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Specializes in 1 PACU,11 ICU, 9 ER.

I am overseas and I normally have 4 pts in the main adult area. Resus is 1:1, consult(like fast track) is 6:1, kids ed 5:1, short stay (obs area) 5: 1 and up to 10:1 at night. (pts mainly sleeping being observed, ivf etc). We also have a waiting room nurse most of the 24 hrs who starts working up pts, they have the entire waiting room! Traige can have up to 6 pts being held in the ambulance area a /w beds, 1-3 triage nurses depending shift.

We are the equivalent of a large busy level 1.

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Work in ny and it is pretty similar

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Specializes in ED.

Three to one 'regular' pts is our norm. Quite often we have a fourth mental health pt that doesn't require much of us once initial eval is done. We often get a fourth if an ambulance comes in when we are full, but once of our main 3 rooms is open that ambulance pt usually goes into that room getting us back to three.

DC :-)

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Specializes in ER.

Patients should be assigned based on acuity not volume...I do per diem in a place with a 1:4 ratio and getting slammed with 4 half-dead patients at once is way more difficult than taking care of 10 stable ones.:(

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Specializes in ED.

Agreed, though in our case, our 3:1 (sometimes 4:1) as I just described is baseline. Someplace to start. We get a STEMI or CVA or respiratory distress or something and others jump in to help until things are manageable and then its still 1:1 for as long as needed, with others covering my other pts and rooms not getting filled until I am available.

DC :-)

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Specializes in ER, TRAUMA, MED-SURG.
Level 2 Trauma ER in New York:

Trauma: Max at 7:1

Acute: Max at 9:1

I've seen it go up to 11:1

It's pretty sick and completely dangerous...

That's absurd!! No way I would be there long!

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