How many visits does a "busy ER" have?

TazziRN, RN · Mar 17, 2008

I can't tell you per year, but I can tell you that in my last ER, a 6-bed unit, anything over 15 pts in a 12-hour shift is considered busy. I think the 24-hour record there is 54 pts.

neneRN, BSN, RN · Mar 17, 2008

I work in the second busiest ER in the state of Florida; we had 136,000 visits last year, and that number gets higher each year. March is always our busiest month and we broke the record of most visits for one day a few weeks ago; we saw 501 patients in a 24 hour period on a Monday from hell.

aeronursenj · Mar 17, 2008

In our Pediatric ED they average 32 visits for a 24 hour period and one day in Feburary 08, they had 99 visits in an 15 hour period. Amazingly not one person was admitted. (it is an inner city hospital, where a PMD is unheard of.)

Aeronursenj

SteveNNP, MSN, NP · Mar 17, 2008

I think "busyness" doesn't depend so much on "visit counts," but on # of beds, admission wait times, staffing levels, etc.

TazziRN, RN · Mar 17, 2008

I think "busyness" doesn't depend so much on "visit counts," but on # of beds, admission wait times, staffing levels, etc.

Wrong. My ER was 6 beds. We always worked up to par levels on staffing, and often didn't admit anyone. 15 pts in 12 hours is "busy".

SteveNNP, MSN, NP · Mar 17, 2008

I worked in an 80 bed Level Trauma center. It had a 1:1 trauma ratio, and a 1:4 ratio otherwise. We had between 100-120k visits a year. While we were almost always turning pts over (usually 8-10 pts per nurse per shift) I was rarely SUPER BUSY. It always depended on who was doing triage, who the docs were, and how many NAs we had. It also depended on how slow pharmacy was, and how many samples the lab had "dropped."

Altra, BSN, RN · Mar 17, 2008

I agree with SteveRN -- to define "busyness" you need to examine exactly what you're looking at:

average pts. per nurse at any given time?

total activity of the department (i.e. number of visits)?

In other words ... pick a number of daily visits, any number. Let's say 50.

Is that 50 patients per day in a 30-bed ER? (doesn't sound very busy)

Or is it 50 patients in a 6-bed ER? (is the picture changing?)

At a particular moment the waiting room may be full but things in the treatment area have slowed to a crawl due to inability to move admitted patients, numerous patients doing the prep for an abd CT scan, etc. At other times the waiting room may be sporificely populated, but we're hopping in the back.

BrnEyedGirl, BSN, MSN, RN, APRN · Mar 17, 2008

I agree with previous posters,..busy is a relative term,..depends on how many beds and staffing etc,...worked a community ER, 6 beds,.60 pts/24 hrs was "busy" for us,.now I work in a 25 bed ( + 10 hall beds) Trauma center (same city) and anything over 250 a day is busy! (we average 72,000/yr)