RN experience prior to ER triage?

A good facility will require you to have some experience plus have a preceptor program to ease you into the role.

That being said I know of MANY hospitals that throw the new grads out front with no experience and a triage algorithm to dictate acuity. So if you're a new grad in the hot seat.....Gooooood luuuuck!
These centers set the tone for the entire department because you get patients mis-categorized all the time. Everyone is frustrated and it becomes dangerous.

Sending the patient to FastTrack or Quick-Care with just "swollen feet" that is.... um, status-post 5 vessel CABG day 3 is inappropriate.

I had a patient who went to the ICU from fast track recently ... not that we truly have a designated "fast track," but we have a set of rooms that we usually use for low acuity stuff. This guy had a cough, so he got a mask (like he had the flu) and got put into our isolation room. Ummmm ... the lungs full of rales, swollen ankles, rapid a-fib and O2 sat of 85% were probably the biggest problems, combined with the pneumonia. Ya think?! How I love starting multiple lines and hanging Cardizem and Levaquin in Ye Olde Faste Tracke. Ha ha.

One of our nurses triaged an ST elevation MI to fast track. To be fair, his complaint was "back pain", he looked good for having an MI and his VS were normal. However, I think that a more intense triage investigation would have determined that the symptoms were cardiac in nature.

In my last job it was about two years before they started inching you into triage. Then you would be part of two nurses for a bit until you were the sole triage RN. There was also a class on triage you took before heading out there.