Student summer externship in ER

[flyingchange]

Hi all,

I was very lucky this year to be hired into a competitive placement at a nearby ER for a student externship. I have no prior emerg experience, except that I volunteered there for about 6 months, but it was strictly non-nursing and I didn't gain any exposure to patient treatments or work flow.

It is a small stand-alone ER (I don't know its official level but I'd give it a Level IV) seeing about 50k annually. The rest of the building are weekday referral clinics. Anything really bad goes to the big hospitals. There is one trauma room and one resus room, about 4 observation beds, maybe 5 regular beds, and a small fast-track area. At my interview they said that most of the codes walk in. In my time volunteering, I never saw anything more serious than a tib-fib fracture.

I am glad that I was accepted to a lower-acuity ER for my first experience in emerg. The nurse educator seems very experienced and knowledgeable, she is a flight nurse as well. I am confident that I will learn a lot.

Just to give me a place to start from, though, I would like to pick up a good resource book for basic ER nursing and get a good idea for the fundamentals and basic interventions.

Does anyone have suggestions for a good book to start with, or portable reference? RNotes, or similar?

Thanks for your advice :)

[nurse.sandi]

HI. Head over to your local bookstore. They should have reliable and respectable books to choose from. I am thinking you will recognize some of the names of the publishers. Maybe you could choose a reference book by the same authors who you studied from for NCLEX? Just a thought. Good luck and that is great that you have an awesome opportunity.

[LegzRN]

That's a pretty high volume for such a small amount of beds, sounds busy busy