ED Experience

Please, get ICU experience. I'm sorry but there is no comparison when it comes to experience you will receive in the ER vs. ICU. I have worked both. I know a lot of people will say, "ER experience will help you to prioritize and be a quick thinker", but so will ICU. Plus, you will learn a bunch more. With ER experience, you don't usually hang on to the patients long enough to get a feel of what is going on with them. ER has a "treat 'em and street 'em" mentality. I'm not faulting them for this but that's just the way it is. I have worked at some big teaching hospitals and small community hospitals, and trust me even at the big teaching hospitals, you won't get the experience you need by working in the ER. You really need to know your vasoactive drugs, how the vents work, etc. When I get report from the ER nurses, I can tell that usually they don't understand how the vasoactive drugs/vents work. I know I didn't when I worked in ER. Plus, in the ER you may have a very critically ill patient mixed in with belly pains, broken limbs, cuts and scraps. Speaking from experience, you take care of critically ill patients just about everytime you work in the ICU. You don't want to waste your time with "stuff" thats not gonna help you in the long run. Good Luck!!!

Also, most programs won't accept ER experience.

I would reccomend an ICU/Critical care background. I have both. My ER experience was in a level 1 trauma ER (we just did trauma) and we kept ICU patients for days at times. But, we still had the treat and street mentality. Prior to that, I had 6+ years of ICU experience. ER gives you some great experience, but for CRNA I think you need ICU. If you have both, great. You need swans, vents, drips, etc. Most ER's don't see that on a daily basis.

Just my personal thoughts!

I'm not a CRNA, just aspiring. It seems to me that if you have the option you should work critical care - not because the experience is necesarily "better," since people have argued back and forth on that since this board came into existence, but because it's what more schools accept. ED experience won't hurt you, just as OR or L&D experience won't either - but you have a better chance of getting into more programs if you have recent high acuity ICU experience on your resume. Some schools happily take ER nurses, more "prefer" ICU nurses, and at least half require ICU. Why limit yourself?