KHERNSE

unfortunately, i know how you feel. however i have been practicing in the er for 8 years and the changes being made are to improve the budget, not the patient care. our er has pods for patient care. 1 nurse is assigned a pod with 4 cardiac beds. the nurse is responsible for transporting, drawing labs, doing ekgs, entering orders, taking orders from adm doc, etc. the problem with this is that if the nurse leaves her/his pod to transport a patient, there is no one caring for the other patient. i once wondered at what point would this change, then a few weeks ago i found out, that even the death of a patient whose alarms could not be heard due to no central monitor did not make a difference.