ED Admissions

Thats cute and comes from a misunderstanding of critical-illness. I think, though, the OP is speaking of certain situations when the patient is in fact stable but being sent to ICU anyway.
Regardless...ICU patients are the sickest in the hospital...no matter what the busy-as-all-get-out ER nurses think...and pulling ICU nurses to transport is pulling them away from other critically sick patients and is bad practice. But...i dont see any harm in a not-busy ICU nurse goin down to help a very-busy ER nurse with transport. Or...if the patient is very unstable and likely to code in transit i can understand wanting ICU help.
The problem (in my mind) arises when the ICU nurse is in 'busy' mode attending to another critically sick patient and is then expected to transport...which is why instituting a 'policy' that dictates ICU ALWAYS transports ER patients would be a bad policy.

LOL!!!

I don't get what the issue is- the ER nurse calls report and if they get delayed what's the BFD? It's better for the ER nurses to bring the patients to ICU. In the ER at my hospital, the nurses usually have 4-5 patients of their own and most everyone is running to the traumas and codes- the nurses are ALL OVER THE PLACE.

If I had to leave the ICU to come get my patient and then have to search all over to find the nurse and get report, I'd be pretty ticked. You know the saying "if it's not broke don't fix it"? Our current system isn't perfect but it's good enough!

I like Devil's Advocate too, but tonight I'm sticking with my ICU buds. As a charge I can't make asignments based on what may come through the ED doors. I have open beds (hopefully) and a nurse that may get one fairly stable patient and the admit. But, ICU being what it is, these patients are critically ill and things can change in a hurry. Out of an 18 bed ICU I may have one empty bed- that's 9 nurses, one with an easy patient and admit potential. Meanwhile tthe other 8 are busy with their 2 critically ill, or semi-stable, trying to wean drips, wean vents, and get orders out so I can fill the bed with another pt- probably someone twice as busy as the first.

Now with that said I'll address the original issue of ICU rn transfering pt from ED to ICU. It is often in our facility that MDs (esp cardiologists, surgeons, GI) will try to slip in a consult before pt leaves the ED. Having our ICU RN wait for this would place the second pt in jeapardy by not having his primary RN on the unit. Further, the strain on staff covering the missing RN would be great, as he/she is now caring for 3 critically ill (multiple gtts, vent) pts for an unspecified amount of time. It's not to say this won't work in your facility, but you'd be hard pressed to find an ICU RN that would be glad to do this-and likewise it is understandable that ED RN's see the benefit in it from their point of view. What we actually do in our hospital is use an RN and a tech trained in BLS to transport from ED to ICU. They are called the Swat team, and do not take assignements. They are the extra RN hands when you need and RN-this works well, and we have a happy ,peachy relationship between our ED and our ICU's-really. These extra RN's also help out in other areas such as cath lab, interventional radiology-because these are, again, areas where a tech may not be enough if the pt is THAAT critical. =