So for the past 10 months I've worked in the ED of a level 1 trauma hospital. To say the very least we are an extremely busy ED. We've had 3 hospitals just in this town close within the last 2 years which of course means MORE PATIENTS. We went from seeing roughly 90K patients in the ED/year to about 110k (as of the last estimate)
I'm relatively new to the ER and I love it, but with only 10 months in I'm already feeling burned out and am looking foward to doing one more year here and them I'm out. Not to mention the nurse turnover rate for this department is high.
It's the sheer volume of patients. It's just too much I work 12 hours shift and last night was a horrid shift. At one point I had 11 patients, including an ICU patient and a slew of extensive abdominal pain workups, plus and ETOH patient that was driving me and my other 10 patients crazy.
Then I get a call from the med-surg nurse upstairs asking me why I sent her a patient that was soaking wet with urine and why we nurses in the ED like to send them dirty patients. I just confessed and told her that I was drowning in almost 10 patients, plus an ICU patient, and that the last time I checked that patient he was dry and clean. Not to mention we have no nurses' aides in our ED anymore, they took them away, so between me and the tech (who is swamped with EKG's and Vitals signs to do) I have to stop and help the little old lady's and gents to the bathroom, give pt's bedpans, and change dirty diapers, and linens, and yes somehow try to prevent my psych, ETOH, dementia patient from falling out the stretcher
Then I have the doctors from the floors asking me to repeat this lab, place that foley, give this medication. Ugh. This is a 500 bed hospital, and almost all of the time patients in the ER wait anywhere from a few minutes (hardly ever) to hours before they get a bed. Which means that I can hardly get to caring for them properly before a get another 3-4 patients within 60 minutes from triage.
I asked my charge if I could somehow be skipped over for just a bit from triage, so that I could catch up because I had atleast 1-2 more patients than ever other nurse in the ED last night. Not saying they had it easy, in fact I didn't get any relief because the nurse to my right had 2 ICU patients (plus 9 others) and the one to my left got slammed from triage 3 patients back to back.
I got NO break last night, I wasn't the only one either. I literally worked 12 hours straight with only half an hour break and I barely even got to sit down at all! Right now my head, feet, and back are throbbing.
I love being a nurse, but I find myself getting colder. People just use the ER so recklessly (already the hospital is losing money and closing units) They don't want to wait, been sitting there for 15 minutes, and bark at you for a blanket, pillow, and a dinner tray. Sometimes I feel so used and abused.
I know the doctors work hard too, but some of them barely help you, or see that you're swamped but still want to know when x,y, z is going to be done. One resident told me the attending was upset because a certain pt didn't have their foley in yet???? well HELLO! someone could've told me that it was ordered and I'm sorry that is last on my priority list, I have people vomiting, screaming in pain, etc.. ! The Med-Surg nurse can insert the foley when they go up to the room. Sometimes I wonder where they fit in, in this whole ''team work'' (healthcare TEAM) we're all supposed to be engaged in. Don't get me wrong we have some lovely doctors who will actually start that IV, or give the morphine to a patient doubling over in pain, but the rest of them and don't even get me started on the surgical or internal medicine residents
And you can forget management, they think everything can be done! They told us that we need to do hourly rounding in the ER! What?
And this is the least of my worries, I won't even go into other things we are subjected to. No wonder nurses come and go here.
Sometimes I wonder if management sees this? Do they understand how hard we work?
I work 12 hours shift and last night was a horrid shift. At one point I had 11 patients, including an ICU patient and a slew of extensive abdominal pain workups, plus and ETOH patient that was driving me and my other 10 patients crazy. 
from triage.
and don't even get me started on the surgical or internal medicine residents 