I started in March, just as COVID hit. I didn’t like the job, but thought I would give it a chance. 6 months on, COVID is not an issue where I am and things are back to normal. But I hate the job more than ever!!
Everyone has such a big ego, even the nurses that have just finished their new grad year. They all think they are the best and know it all. Management is toxic! They bully staff and put staff down every chance they can get.
I worked float pool before, so had done ER and most clinical areas, but they see me as ‘just a floor nurse’ which in their opinion is the lowest form of nursing where all you do is shower/toilet pt all day. I am sick of it.
I feel like I use less skills in the ER than anywhere else I’ve worked. All pts are the same, vitals, ECG, blood draws, urine sample, pain relief, and the odd catheter. I’ve literally done nothing else! I miss all the things I did on the floor.
I applied to a few jobs back in February, before COVID, and to my surprise I got offered interviews at every single hospital. But I chose this job because the manager talked it so much, made it out to be completely different to what it is. This was a big decision for me, it was on the other side of the country. I knew absolutely no one here. And it was an expensive move. I 100% regret my decision.
I feel stuck here. I don’t want to be here. I have told myself I have to stay one year, get that ‘ER experience’, pay off my student loan and not look like a job hopper. But I’m so unhappy. I don’t know if I can stick it out.
We are running around like chickens with our heads cut off and we do need to move patients because we don’t have a cap on our census. A delay in patient dispo means the waiting room gets backed up further which is “to the detriment” of many patients. And a med surg level patient in an assignment with critical patients in the ED is not going to get the attention they need.
If you’re writing up ED nurses a lot, I suspect there’s major patient throughput and staffing levels in your ED.
I don't doubt that, but some of the things that are missed are so basic yet important, it is scary. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a staffing issue in our ED.
7 hours ago, hherrn said:
If you get a chance, float or shadow in the ER.
Maybe your ER sucks and is full of incompetence. But, I don't tend to see this attitude from anybody who actually knows the ER.
I have actually and the level of incompetence was...yikes.
As a floor RN, I can't count how many times my coworkers and I have had to write incident reports on the ED for subpar or dangerous care. ED often has a mindset of treat em and street em often to the detriment of the patient and miss critical information because they are running around like chickens with their head cut off.
Are you considering this incompetence, then, or system level dysfunction or what? Your comment is kind of confusing in that it sounds like you are questioning the competence (or ethics or work ethic?) of individual RNs, but then at the end you say that what you are witnessing is because they are running around like chickens with their head cut off.
Are you considering this incompetence, then, or system level dysfunction or what? Your comment is kind of confusing in that it sounds like you are questioning the competence (or ethics or work ethic?) of individual RNs, but then at the end you say that what you are witnessing is because they are running around like chickens with their head cut off.
Oh no. I'm not blaming the nurses individually for incompetence. I am blaming the unit and system as a whole.
What I am trying to say is that ED has some of the same problems and similarities as med-surg (poor staffing, crazy patients and assignment loads, LOTS of tasks) that it is silly for them to look down on floor nurses. It is also silly because med-surg RNs are frequently floated to work in the ED, and ED nurses can be assigned to floor patients as well.
Fortunately, I haven't come across too many ED nurses with that attitude, but there can be tension between the ED staff and the med-surg nurses, but I believe that tension is caused by administration and management and the crappy work conditions they force us in.
What I am trying to say is that ED has some of the same problems and similarities as med-surg (poor staffing, crazy patients and assignment loads, LOTS of tasks) that it is silly for them to look down on floor nurses.
I roll my eyes when I hear ED nurses talk a big game. As a floor RN, I can't count how many times my coworkers and I have had to write incident reports on the ED for subpar or dangerous care. ED often has a mindset of treat em and street em often to the detriment of the patient and miss critical information because they are running around like chickens with their head cut off.
It might piss some ED nurses off, but I liken ED to med-surg on steroids.
Sometimes I do feel like we can’t provide good care. I have worked in EDs with unsafe patient to nurse ratios (ex. All 4 patients turning into ICU level of care and my assignment isn’t adjusted by the charge nurse), we can’t close our front doors so can have 7 to 8 hour waits in triage, often are denied diversion when we think we have unsafe issues, have an ED full of hold patients so we have nowhere to put ER patients, and administration really doesn’t care or do anything about it. However, writing up ER nurses is rarely helpful. What would be helpful is if everyone made a joint effort and made a group appointment with administration to try to make changes to our circumstances. I think I have made maybe 3 safety reports in my entire time as a nurse in the ED. Why is that? I am too busy trying to make sure my patients don’t crash and die because either we don’t have enough staff or we have acuity levels so high and many that the staff can’t cover that many critical patients. All I ask is to not provide judgement until actually working in the ER.....same as ICU or medsurg or OR. Every nursing speciality has unique challenges.
I have been a nurse for over 30 years and have worked the ER for at least the last 25 years and I have always loved it. I work in a small rural hospital, close to the interstate and also in a farming community. We have a 10 bed ER and we see quite a bit of trauma. We don’t have any of the specialized teams the larger ERs have so we have to rely on each other. We work as a team to care for the patients. We take care of the high acuity trauma and critically ill patients as well as the lower acuity patients. When you are in a rural ER you perform tasks that you would not do in the larger Urban ERs. This is where I gained the majority of my knowledge.
With being a small hospital we also rely on help from the Med-surg and the ICU nurses, we all function as a team, that’s not to say that everyone gets along well 100% of the time, but usually problems that arise are from misunderstandings. There is not the pettiness that ER nurses are better than any of the other nurses that work in the hospital.
I have worked PRN at several facilities and the reasons I have named above is why I have worked full-time at this facility for over 30 years.
I hope you can find a nursing position that you are happy with.
I am in urgent care (ED's twin) and literally feel the same way- all I do is vitals, ECG, blood draws, urine sample, pain relief, and the odd catheter. I'm so f-n'in over it and the ATTITUDES form the staff. I miss the floor too! The MA's hate me b/c I'm a nurse and I make more than them doing the same thing they do and the providers want me to literally do their job for them while they sit on their rear end playing candy crush.
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ThePrincessBride, MSN, RN, NP
1 Article; 2,594 Posts
I don't doubt that, but some of the things that are missed are so basic yet important, it is scary. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a staffing issue in our ED.
I have actually and the level of incompetence was...yikes.