Why is everyone hating on ED?

Specialties Emergency

Published

Man we are the most disliked place in the hospital and everyone has a complaint! Took a critically ill patient to ICU tonight with blood, two antibiotics, sandostatin drip, insulin drip, protonix drip, and fluids to the floor at 1850. We get the patient situated (which the ICU nurses did not want or appreciate my help at all) and then they are upset because I didn't do the 1900 glucose check for her insulin drip?!:down:

We get written up and complained about for ridiculous things (like forgetting to put our phone number on the paperwork we send up to the floor...um call the ED and ask to speak with me if you need me that badly). Anyone else have similar experiences?

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Allllll the time. I don't mind helping and I'll admit when I'm wrong, but dang. Normally, I don't have any problems when sending a patient to the floor. I try to get everything that I can possibly think of done to where the CCU or the floor won't have to do it.

If I send urine on a patient, I send both tubes, U/A and culture just in case it gets ordered upon admit so the floor doesn't have to do it. If we have a patient that gets intubated, I'll put in an OGT so it helps CCU out. If the patient is a hard stick and their access isn't what I think it should be and they need better access for the floor or CCU, I talk to the doc about it before sending them up so that we can either consult PICC team or the doc can put in a central line in the ED. If I see the admitting doctor has put in an order for a foley but we don't have an order to do it in the ED, I'll go ahead and place it and just tell CCU I already took care of it.

Help each other out. Trust me. I don't want to bring the patient to you right before shift change. That means I'll be getting a new patient from triage or an EMS to my room before shift change. I understand that it puts you behind, but let me promise you, it puts me behind too. The hospital is a 24/7/365 gig.

We need to start working together and trying to improve patient outcomes rather than nitpicking at each other and writing each other up over stupid, petty, bull.

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Man I did almost all of that! Got the central line in, labelled the IV tubing, sent down all of the bloodwork, cultures, etc. Got the Foley in. I couldn't believe how rude they were! Like I didn't even do anything haha. Whatever though, just more annoying than anything.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.
Man I did almost all of that! Got the central line in, labelled the IV tubing, sent down all of the bloodwork, cultures, etc. Got the Foley in. I couldn't believe how rude they were! Like I didn't even do anything haha. Whatever though, just more annoying than anything.

Totally understand where you're coming from. That's just the life of an ER nurse. It's the way it is. The floor and CCU talk bad about us and we do the same about them. It's not right. But it's the way it goes.

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Specializes in ICU.

There is alot of ******** about the ER on my med-surg floor for various things that are usually not really the ER nurses faults. For example, some of the annoying things I see are no coverage for high blood sugars, no foley placement, bad IVs, bad reports, badgering us for report (lol, the ER nurses probably get pissed because we always need to call them back). Mainly this is physician or nurse practitioners' faults for not ordering certain things. It is also annoying b/c we are supposed to give report and transfer admits in a certain amount of time so it puts pressure on both the ER and med/surg. We get annoyed because on nights we rarely have PCTs anymore, whereas ER usually does have a tech. I would say most of the annoyance/hatred is really not about you, but about stress and being overworked and them taking it out on you. For us, it almost feels like they try to dump patients on us as quick as they can. I know it is not your fault, but that is how it feels.

For the most part, I think the ER staff is great. I know we have our own struggles on each floor. And hell, I always call ER for hard IV sticks so I appreciate them for helping out.

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Specializes in Critical care.
Man I did almost all of that! Got the central line in, labelled the IV tubing, sent down all of the bloodwork, cultures, etc. Got the Foley in. I couldn't believe how rude they were! Like I didn't even do anything haha. Whatever though, just more annoying than anything.

Wanna come work in our ER? Sounds like you got a lot done. I think this video sums it up nicely...

Cheers

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Specializes in ER, Med-surg.

Ugh, yes. And as a former floor nurse, it really chaps my hide, because while I know they work hard, I did it for years, I also know that the receiving floor nurse does NOT actually need me to read the entire computer-accessible chart out loud to her, and I can smell a delaying tactic a mile away. If the receiving nurse has truly been in patient rooms for the last hour after the bed is assigned and absolutely can't take report, the charge nurse needs to step up and take it so this elderly patient can get off a stretcher and in to a real bed, and so we can start working up someone else. We have more patients coming in. They need beds. They will be so much nicer to take care of if they don't experience hours of delay waiting for a bed in the ED before they get to you, I promise.

I'll do my level best to get patients clean, pretty, and fully medicated while I've got them, but we don't stock the same supplies in the ED as on the floor, we don't have bathrooms or showers in most of the rooms, we don't have ready access to some of the meds and equipment commonly ordered on admit patients, so if we get a bed assignment in a timely fashion, they might well go up before pharmacy sends up their admit meds or central supply brings SCDs or we finally, finally track down a second IV pump. No, I'm not waiting to get the urine specimen before I send them, patients are stacked forty deep in the lobby and we have five ambulances waiting.

The idea that some floor or unit nurses have that they shouldn't be expected to manage a patient who hasn't been prepped and pressed by the ED first is so frustrating and antithetical to a smooth transition of care and a patients-first philosophy.

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Specializes in MICU, SICU, CICU.
Man we are the most disliked place in the hospital and everyone has a complaint! Took a critically ill patient to ICU tonight with blood, two antibiotics, sandostatin drip, insulin drip, protonix drip, and fluids to the floor at 1850. We get the patient situatedw hich the ICU nurses did not want or appreciate my help at all) and then they are upset because I didn't do the 1900 glucose check for her insulin drip?!:down:

That is a lot of work. I would be super impressed with an ED nurse who did all of that.

That diva mentality, laziness and nitpicking gets on my nerves too. So sorry that you had to experience that.

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Specializes in Critical Care.
That is a lot of work. I would be super impressed with an ED nurse who did all of that.

That diva mentality, laziness and nitpicking gets on my nerves too. So sorry that you had to experience that.

Totally agree. I'm an ICU nurse also, and I can't imagine expecting the ED nurse to have done a 1900 glucose check at 1850 whilst transporting said patient. That's pretty ridiculous.

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Specializes in ER.

there have always been and will always be complaints. about the ER I think the absurdity of nursing has gotten more brazen in their badgering of ER nurses, I will say. The supposed control of a patient report given by the ER nurse to the floor is what I find generally to have become a huge hurdle. Newer nurses "refusing" to take a patient because they are "uncomfortable" with the patient (because they are new). The acceptability of these excuses are mind boggling. Time to ask your coworkers for remediation and help, if need be, but don't further give our ER nurses a hard time when we are barely keeping our noses above the water. Please, help us help you (teamwork!).

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I admit I used to complain mildly about the ED when I worked on the floor but I never gave them problems personally. And if they called report at change of shift well I took it. At my new job however, one particular floor made every attempt to delay getting report and the patient. No joke we would be waiting 2 hours sometimes. And then when you would give them report you they would try to find every excuse in the book not to accept the patient. Oh, the patient is mildly tachycardic (low 100s) because they are running a temperature from pneumonia? Nope, should they go to telemetry? Ugh! Drives me nuts. Now if they don't take the patient within a half hour we have permission from our bosses to send the patient up with the ED records and chart. They hate it but well, they deserve it!

PS, if I ever worked on a floor again I would never complain about ED again.

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Maybe they are just miserable people then lol. Thanks for making me feel better.

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