Barnes ER vs Surgical/Trauma ICU

baby_gurl0604 · Jun 14, 2008

Hi everyone, my wife and I are relocating to the area and I was wanting some opinions on Barnes ER vs the Surgical/Trauma ICU. I have heard the ER has high unsafe nurs/pt ratios and people are afraid of losing their licenses and the ICU has awesome variet/equipment/cool pts but the atmosphere is catty, backstabbing with questionable mgt. Would love to hear all good and bad. PM if it is easier/you feel safer. We will be coming in the next few months to interview (she is looking at Childrens - see our other thread). HELP GUYS!!!

I currently work in the er at Barnes. What you said about the unsafe nurse/pt ratios and fear of losing our licenses is absolutely true, and is the main reason I am looking for a new job. It is common there to have just 3 nurses in a pod of 16 beds in the emergent care areas, so you end up with 6 or more patients, no matter how critical they may be. A lot of thetime, they just keep giving you more patients unless you ask for a pass. Also, the rooms are not geographically assigned, so you may have a psych patient trying to elope on one side and a unit patient on the other, in addition to your other patients. You're constantly running- it's a horrible system but it increases the flow of the department that way, so the management doesn't care. The morale there is very low right now, and there is a very high turnover.

I've heard good thiings about the MICU and the SICU. I think the managers up there are a little more flexible with scheduling for people going back to school, etc.

Feel free to pm with any other ?'s, good luck with your job search!

km2066 · Sep 29, 2008

Have you made it to st. louis yet? Where did you decide to work?

stl2nola72 · Mar 24, 2011

I worked in the surgical/trauma ICU there in 2005 for my first trauma experience and it was the best nursing job I ever had. I LOVED it. I liked my coworkers and didn't find it catty at all. There were a lot of guys on staff then and it balanced out all the ****** princess cliquish behavior that you get in nursing. I moved to New Orleans from there and got a horrible dose of mean and nasty behavior and now I am trying to go back to STL. I love Barnes.