Emergency nursing help

[FUTURE_ER_RN]

Hi Everyone!

I am currently in my 5th semester of nursing school and am currently working on my honors project. I have been interested in emergency nursing since before starting nursing school so I decided to do my project on emergency nursing. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on additional areas that I could include in my research project. Here is what I have in mind so far:

Determine requirements for becoming an ER nurse

Identify the various trauma levels of different emergency rooms

Identify the triage levels used to prioritize patient care

Demonstrate an understanding of emergency nursing

I plan on submitting a questionnaire to students in various semesters at my nursing school to determine their interest in ER nursing and their knowledge base regarding ER nursing. I am also going to interview various emergency nurse managers to get an idea of what they look for when hiring a new ER nurse. I want to present the information I gather in a journal article and/or with a presentation to nursing students. My nursing school does not offer any kind of educational guidance, I guess you could call it, regarding ER nursing so I thought I would develop a way that those students who were interested could get the information the school doesn't provide. If anyone has any advice on additional information to research/include or sites that offer great information on emergency nursing I would greatly appreciate it!! Thanks so much!

[lkwashington]

You have enough information. Don't overwhelm yourself.

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

You might solicit the Emergency Nurses Association.

[EmergencyNrse]

The ENA is not your friend. It has been converted to a political organization that panders to the Joint Commission and only wants your money.

They sold us out long ago...

[Medic2RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

I think you are off to a great start.

[emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

I would also suggest that the questionnaire have the responders look at themselves. The ER is not for everyone.

Here's a few, I know all y'all can come up with more. (no, I'm not from the south, but I took a class last week that had one instuctor from Texas)

- Is structure and routine important? In the ER, the routine is no routine.

- Do they easily adapt to quickly changing situations? You go from 0-100 often.

- Are they comfortable being uncomfortable? This is pretty much how you feel the 1st year or so in the ER.

[FUTURE_ER_RN]

Thank you for the responses everyone! I am really excited about doing this project as I don't know much about ER nursing, but would love to! It may even help me down the road to get a job in the ER if they see I was interested enough to do an honors project on ER nursing! Thanks!!

[hiddencatRN, BSN, RN]

The ENA is not your friend. It has been converted to a political organization that panders to the Joint Commission and only wants your money.

They sold us out long ago...

In what way do they pander to the Joint Commission? And how did they sell us out? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be adversarial. I'm a new grad and joined the ENA while in school and used it to network to get my first job, and my experiences with the local chapter have been good. Feel free to pm me if you don't want to answer here.