I get it, we on the floor don't see what you see- gunshots, knife cuts, fights, rape victims. But you chose that. Nursing is a wide, varied profession and ER is just a piece of it. So you work with firefighters, paramedics, police. Okay. But you're not a firefighter, paramedic or a police officer. You're a nurse. When you call the floor for report and we say we're too busy right now, we'll call you back, please don't call your boss, or the House Supervisor, and tell them we refused report. Again, I get it. Nobody is as busy as you. But we may have had our hands deep in poop, or in the middle of a dressing change, or with a doctor, or administering chemotherapy. Or we may be already getting report from the offgoing shift. And yes, another nurse is just as busy and can't take the report I would rather get first hand anyway. When we get report from you for a hip fracture patient and you say the BP is 191/92 and she has a history of hypertension, please don't get offended if I ask if you've covered the blood pressure. I know she's being admitted with a hip fracture and not for hypertension. But hypertension is something we're aware of, because it is also bad. If you send the patient up without covering the BP, by the time she's moved from gurney to bed that BP has spiked to over 200 and I have a possible stroke to add to that fracture. Will it kill you to walk over to your MD, the one with whom you enjoy a closer relationship, and ask for some Vasotec? And while you're at it, could you not forget some pain meds before you send the patient to the floor? You see, I have to call the admitting MD, that very MD your doctor just spoke with to admit the patient, and wait until he calls back, before I can give any medications. That can and does take hours. Meanwhile I have an increasingly uncomfortable, unstable patient and a family who is getting very concerned that this new nurse can't help their mother.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I just read another Megalomaniac ER blog slamming floor nurses as stupid and lazy, refusing report, fighting with ER because they're uncomfortable taking unstable patients ER wants to move because they need the beds. There is more than just you, ER.
An admit team is a good thing, we actually have that in my ER - a nurse that does the entire admission history, pt belonging list, med list, etc. The receiving nurse only has to make sure the belongings are present and do the admission assessment.
Kudos, my dear. I am a M/S nurse who dare anyone to walk in my shoes too. I volunteer to float ER anytime. ER to is very convenient MS floor with MD around to attend your need, no waiting for pharmacy, no phone call necessary with less patient. what is the percentage of real emergency that came to the ER? anyone know in a given night. I will tell you one thing a M/S nurse can survive anywhere. ER ICU pacu bring it on. we will have plenty time to focus.
My hospital is very busy. I used to tell my interns the ER covers the abcs and ICU does the rest. Of course some will want to fight with each other til tomorrow while the patient waits for one of you to step up and do the right thing! Do you ever see physicians doing this to one another? Nope....what does that say about nurses? ........
Kudos, my dear. I am a M/S nurse who dare anyone to walk in my shoes too. I volunteer to float ER anytime. ER to is very convenient MS floor with MD around to attend your need, no waiting for pharmacy, no phone call necessary with less patient. what is the percentage of real emergency that came to the ER? anyone know in a given night. I will tell you one thing a M/S nurse can survive anywhere. ER ICU pacu bring it on. we will have plenty time to focus.
How simple is that? The concept simple to me. OH! Don't let anyone else read this- this might beat me out for being "the most disrespectful thing I've heard from a fellow nurse".
Kudos, my dear. I am a M/S nurse who dare anyone to walk in my shoes too. I volunteer to float ER anytime. ER to is very convenient MS floor with MD around to attend your need, no waiting for pharmacy, no phone call necessary with less patient. what is the percentage of real emergency that came to the ER? anyone know in a given night. I will tell you one thing a M/S nurse can survive anywhere. ER ICU pacu bring it on. we will have plenty time to focus.
Sorry but I have to change your theory a bit to agree with it. Not a M/S nurse but a GOOD nurse can SURVIVE anywhere and a GREAT nurse can THRIVE anywhere. Unfortunately the majority of the M/S nurses I have ever dealt with in my 15 years of hospital work have not been GOOD nurses and could not survive past a few weeks of training in surgery..... I have invited many M/S and ICU nurses to come do some open heart with me and not a single one thought they could survive in it or thrive for that matter.... I have worked on the nursing floors and SICU... have had plenty of offers to go full time in the settings... its not my thing, I dont WANT to do it.... I am sure ER nurses feel the same way, why take a step down into M/S or ICU out of your own specialty area(im talking pay in my case)....
Either way I have seen unit nurses come up with plenty of BS reasons not to take a patients report, MEAL TIME is a BS excuse.... rooms not clean, so freakin clean it, the unit nurses get kinda mad when they tell me that and I go and clean their room and 10 minutes later I am giving them report at their nurses station.... The whole time they have not left the nurses station because they were "charting", not sure how you do that while on your cell phone.....
"i had to giggle, b/c we've got a couple of those where i work. honestly though at my hospital it's the icu nurses who have the rep for feeling superior."
i was a hot-shot icu nurse for a long time when i was younger and prettier, and whenever somebody seemed to be in awe of what i did i used to say that i was willing to work just as hard as the people who worked med/surg:up:, and they did work very hard, but i just hated running up and down halls. i also wanted to know as much as possible about my patients and i found that much easier if i had one or two than if i had twenty. i couched this in terms of being purely selfish, with a rueful smile as if it were my personal failing, and never put down any other specialty.
(when in reality i thought icu was da bomb and you couldn't pay me double to do anything else!)
Specializes in CCU, CVICU, Cath Lab, MICU, Endoscopy..
Kudos, my dear. I am a M/S nurse who dare anyone to walk in my shoes too. I volunteer to float ER anytime. ER to is very convenient MS floor with MD around to attend your need, no waiting for pharmacy, no phone call necessary with less patient. what is the percentage of real emergency that came to the ER? anyone know in a given night. I will tell you one thing a M/S nurse can survive anywhere. ER ICU pacu bring it on. we will have plenty time to focus.
LOL I respect every specialty but I have to say my ER shockroom is a different breed. I avoid its hallway too...hehehe I would love to see some of you there from a distance Ofcourse:clown: I bet you'd ran 20 people in one room multiple specialties barking orders back at you is not exactly a walk in the park! Welcome anytime :-)
"i had to giggle, b/c we've got a couple of those where i work. honestly though at my hospital it's the icu nurses who have the rep for feeling superior."
i was a hot-shot icu nurse for a long time when i was younger and prettier, and whenever somebody seemed to be in awe of what i did i used to say that i was willing to work just as hard as the people who worked med/surg:up:, and they did work very hard, but i just hated running up and down halls. i also wanted to know as much as possible about my patients and i found that much easier if i had one or two than if i had twenty. i couched this in terms of being purely selfish, with a rueful smile as if it were my personal failing, and never put down any other specialty.
(when in reality i thought icu was da bomb and you couldn't pay me double to do anything else!)
my joke about liking er nursing is that i don't have to spend a lot of time with my patients: someone is annoying? no prob, they'll either be d/c or admit shortly! in reality, that's what i miss most about being on the med surg floor- the relationships i was able to build with my patients over a couple of back to back 12s.
Kudos, my dear. I am a M/S nurse who dare anyone to walk in my shoes too. I volunteer to float ER anytime. ER to is very convenient MS floor with MD around to attend your need, no waiting for pharmacy, no phone call necessary with less patient. what is the percentage of real emergency that came to the ER? anyone know in a given night. I will tell you one thing a M/S nurse can survive anywhere. ER ICU pacu bring it on. we will have plenty time to focus.[/
MD to attend to your need? Seriously? How about a MD that depends on me knowing what to do before he sets eyes on the patient...a MD that depends on the ER nurse being proactive and not waiting on him to tell her what to do. As far as the idea that a M/S nurse can survive anywhere...okay how often do M/S nurses have to deal with a patient in SVT, or a GSW patient, or a peds patient....how many M/S nurses have ACLS,PALS,NRP,TNCC? because to survive in my world you need those things...so before you make statements about bring it on you need to assess your skill set cause my dear a M/S nurse skill set isn't the same as mine.
Specializes in Oncology, ID, Hepatology, Occy Health.
What a fireball thread. Seems every country has their "target" speciality accused of putting its nurses on a pedestal. When I was in the UK it was ICU, here in France it's OR nurses.
Isn't the reality that every speciality has its difficulties and its conveniences? Don't we all have core skills and then specialist skills we develop wherever we work, ER, OR, geriatrics, pshych, oncology etc.? We all have things we can learn from each other. No speciality is the speciality of supernurses, and while a minority of nurses in certain areas think they're better than others, they are a minority so let's not tar everybody with the same brush. Most of us recognise we have different skills and can all learn from one another.
lol! i just laughed uncontrollably just reading the title to this post! oh my gosh! i've worked e.r. on and off for years, its actually very easy compared to floor nursing and ltc. but don't try to tell this to the "real" nurses. my gosh! what's with all the drama. i worked with one in particular in the e.r., she had "the hardest job in the world. i wish i had it easy like the lazy floor nurses". i always asked her how is it soooo hard to be a triage nurse? the only thing hard was breaking up her clucking hen party.
oh goodness. drama queens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that is a hasty generalization. not all er nurses deal with floor nurses this way. it is entirely specific to who the nurse is, the floor, and the patient/scenario. there are some raging er nurses, just as there are some raging floor nurses who are all about the bm questions on a patient being admitted with cp/mi. really. some questions that totally waste our time, such as skin status on a young, ambulatory patient being admitted for a headache.... when we're trying to be quick, efficient, and get the patient out because we have fourty patients in the waiting room and ambulance patients lining up in the halls with no nurses available to take care of them. do you have to deal with that on the floors, i ask? do they admit patients to a hallway spot until "someone" can take care of them? no.
things are very different in an er. some nights are crazy and chaotic, sometimes not. sometimes we are neck deep in a c-dif patient, as well as out of control etoh'ers who are trying to elope, while also dealing with patients on call lights every 2 minutes with very needy families.
i get that sometimes floor nurses are mistreated, i really do. not all nurses are created equal and it's unfair to assume some are stupid or smart. assume they can all do their job until they prove otherwise. sometimes a nurse opens their mouth and removes all doubt about their lack of common sense.
i find that doctors that hang out in the er to admit patients tend to talk poorly about floor nurses because they are called about every little thing (including a temp of 99.0 at 0200 and wanting tylenol, i kid you not). i remind them that their orders call for those parameters. i think what the docs get frustrated about is when some floor nurses don't use their clinical judgment prior to calling the doc. maybe the nurses don't feel comfortable or able to do that, i don't know. i do know, for myself, that when i worked on a floor, i did not have the ear of physicians like i do now. they are willing to listen to what i think is going on with a patient when they're in the er talking to me.
as far as the anger between er and other floors go will never change. unless you have walked in my shoes, you don't get it. you never will. i, on the other hand, have walked in your shoes, and let me tell you this: er is harder. scarier. more chaotic, less controlled. sometimes a bit looser when the waiting room is empty or have some empty rooms, so there are less ears to hear when you cut up.
next time you deal with an er nurse, keep in mind, they might be stressed out too. we have pressures to get patients out of rooms and upstairs the second the room is ready. they chomp at the bit to get the next patient in the room, often putting the patient in the hall next to the room so you can start treating them. do you do that on your floor?? i don't think so.
easy to judge when you haven't walked on my wild side. try it. for at least some perspective.
Not putting down any other units, ICU and ER are excellent units to be on. As someone already mentioned, you take time to know your patients in ICU. Regardless of acuity, 1-2patients is a big bonus.
As for the ER, one can only take that in small doses.Thumbs up:)
How dare you!
FancypantsRN
299 Posts
An admit team is a good thing, we actually have that in my ER - a nurse that does the entire admission history, pt belonging list, med list, etc. The receiving nurse only has to make sure the belongings are present and do the admission assessment.