How often do EMS crews show up to your dept unannounced?

Tonjia · Dec 6, 2009

not very often. Sometimes the squad will call report to the wrong ED, but most of the time they are spot on with their reports. When I lived in PA though, we had some paramedics who wouldnt call report because they were too busy. At that time we knew they had their hands full and we didnt hassle them..

Virgo_RN, BSN, RN · Dec 6, 2009

I simple "here I come!" is much appreciated in a critical situation.
Otherwise complaint, vitals, and ETA. I'll never forget as a new nurse I asked for a temp on someone pulled out of an icey lake. They politely answered, but when they got to the ED "effing COLD!" was the actual reply. Never lived it down.

Thank you for the laugh! :yeah:

Azzurri · Dec 7, 2009

I've known critical care nurses to voice similar complaints about ED nurses who bring patients to the unit with little notice and/or incomplete reports. But y'know what, it happens man. The ED can get a little crazy and they can't always wrap my patients with a pretty bow on top. Sometimes the work environment sucks and prevents us from performing ideally. That goes for both nurses and EMTs.

You know this statement you said about critcal care nurses annoys the **** out of me. I work in an extremely busy ED/Trauma and the ICU nurses almost 98% of the time always have something to complain about. There are days when i'm working the trauma assignment that also includes 3 other critical rooms and we'll be getting hit with trauma after trauma on top of the 3 other vented/ICU pts and I'll call report on one of he ICU pts(and I might add I give an excellent report and always get compliments from CC nurses especially for my neuro exams sec. to neuro icu hx) and when I finally get the pt situated to go up and resp on their way as well as pt escort, another trauma will be called. At this point I can't go up yet because myself and resp have to goto the trauma and this same issue will keep repeating itself for an hour or so and we end up taking the pt up at near change of shift and get reemed out by one of the nurses in the icu. I understand their frustration since I have experienced this first hand working in an icu and as the original poster said it happens in the ed all to frequently. But what the icu nurses fail to understand or realize is the **** we deal with in the ED and that I can't leave my assignment partners alone with new traumas or even wait until after change of shift to take the pts up because then we would be unneccesarily be holding the pt in one of our critcal care rooms that could be used for a code/CPR, trauma or some other unstable pt just to make the icu nurses happy.

Regarding the OP statement. There r numerous times when pts just show up and you'll hear overhead trauma alert or trauma code pt is here because they were too lazy to call it in or they were so close to the hospital that it wouldn't have made a difference. These unexpected arrival **** me off on occassion but working in this type of enviroment the level 1 ed is, I feel as if I'm trained to handle almost anything, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm o the smartest or strongest rn in my er or that I know everything and have nothing else to learn but I do feel relatively comfortable n my ability to adapt situations. What really tends to **** me off about EMS on occassion is when ALS will show up with a really sick or very hemodynamically unstable pt without even an attempt to place an IV because they thought the pt was a hard stick or the best line I ever heard from a medic is "I was gonna put in a line but thought I'd let u do it", for no other reason than they didn't feel like it and this turned out to be a very sick and unstable pt.