NYC Emergency Rooms

amzyRN · May 2, 2017

I have heard NYC doesn't have staffing ratios and that you might get 10 patients. I work in CA and one of my co-workers is from NYC who told me this. She said unless you were in the trauma bay you could end up with multiple ICU patients plus some in the hallway. She said it was crazy. I think it will vary from facility to facility though how understaffed you'll be. Look at yelp reviews for where you want to work too, that usually gives an idea of how good or bad the hsopital is.

Lev, MSN, RN, NP · May 3, 2017

I've heard the same thing. It's terrible.

DayDreamin ER CRNP · May 3, 2017

I've known several co-workers that have travelled to NYC or the area and hated every minute of it. One girl said she would have 10-12 patients at a time but never really did any "real" nursing - she gave meds and charted it all night long and was expected to keep up with several critical patients. More often than not, the residents did most of the work and she just charted it all.

As a new grad, I would want an environment that fosters learning and growth w/out being thrown into the deep end of the pool and expected to swim a mile. It just isn't safe practice and a great way for a new grad to lose her license.

Wolf at the Door, BSN · May 3, 2017

10-12 LOL try 18 patients.

Ambiguphobia · May 19, 2017

Gotta agree here. I find it hilarious when people whine about having 6 patients.

NYC RN with an average load of 1:20 on just my last shift. Have gone up to 30s with several critical patients in hallways and chairs, no monitors, lack of life saving meds readily available, etc. No ICU RNs get pulled to come help with criticals. So I've had 25 "regular" patients who are awaiting workup, disposition, admission to med/surg floors, then I also have 5-10 critical/stepdown/tele patients that need monitors at the same time.

Then you have your CNAs and techs pulled to do 1:1s (sometimes they do 1:3s due to lack of staff...) on SI/HI/safety patients so you are getting yelled at by all sides of family members and friends who say their grandma or whoever has wet the bed for the 10th time in the past two hours. You also get the people who constantly ask for food and try to garner your sympathy by saying they haven't eaten in 12 hours. It gets real bad.

I've had an idiot literally pull the curtain to tell me her mother pooped again while I was performing CPR. She then complained that I took too long to get to her mother and that I was giving her an attitude when I told her to go back to her room while we were coding the patient. Had a sickler follow me to trauma bay and tell me she should get priority over our cardiac arrest and that her Dilaudid was due 10 minutes ago.

As for the poster saying that they know someone that says we don't do "real" nursing - that's just totally untrue. Residents are available to help, but they have their own 6-10 patients each. I dare anyone to work in an NYC ER and say that we don't do real nursing.

The types of patients we see vary from minute to minute, from shift to shift. Sometimes you'll have 30 drunks. Other times, you'll have an MVA pileup so you have 5 traumas called at once. Other nights, you relish in the fact that you only have 12 patients with none of them going to a critical unit, and you breathe a sigh of relief that you've finished passing their medications and possibly have caught up on drawing all their bl

As bad as it sounds, I truly love being an ER nurse.