craigrn4er

If on insulin gtt we check FSBS every 1 hour

I went through a detailed ER Internship that involved time on the floor with a preceptor as well as time in class. To me, the class time was pretty much a waste of time with little exception. Most of the classes seemed like a repeat of nursing school. I had hoped that they would have been more in depth. The exceptions were the class on EKG rhythms and the ACLS class. The ACLS class was geared just toward the new grads and was much slower paced and very detailed. We practiced numerous megacodes and a lot of different scenarios before we had to test and it was very beneficial. The best part of the internship was my time on the floor with my preceptor. Of course the important thing here is to have preceptors that like to teach. I think this needs to be geared toward assessment and the "tricks of the trade" so to speak.

Few things really irritate me as much as feeling like the floor is dodging a patient. This seems to happen all of the time. We are actually working on changing the process in our hospital. We are working on a form that will be used for any patient being transferred anywhere in the hospital (i.e: ER to floor, ICU to tele, tele to ICU, etc). We are supposed to fill out a detailed report form and fax it to the floor. If they do not call with ???s within 30 minutes, the pt goes to the new bed.

In our ER, the pt signs in with registration first. They get the name and cc. I really do not like this b/c I think the 1st person a pt should see is a medical type person not registration. They do however, let the triage nurse know if cc is something like chest pain.

I am not sure who would have been responsible. Probably depends on the lawyer and who had the deepest pockets. I would probably lean towards the ER facility. My question is did the EMS not see the ST elevation on their monitor and tell the charge or MD?