Emisa

Thank you for all of your replies :-) I envy your ratios - our ratios an average day are 1:10, but on really bad days they are 1:20 and above... Reason for this is that every patient who is admitted to the ER by triage has to have a team nurse responsible for them regardless of acuity. We have no psych patients but pretty much every other category and those patients are divided equally between 3 different teams in the main ER, regardless if a room is available or not. Each team consists of 1 RN and 1-2 techs, and maybe 3 physicians. One thing I do like is that we have a separate so called alarm team - a team consisting of 2 nurses and one tech along with an emergency physician. They take care of all incoming priority 1 patients, like cardiac arrests, traumas etc. in a separate alarm room in the ER.

Hello :) I'm a Swedish nurse and have worked in an ER for several years now, and am very curious about how the average non-Scandinavian ER works when it comes to patient flow and work stations. Who is the first one to talk to the patient regarding chief complaint? Are vitals taken at this point or later on? What different work stations are there in the ER? How many patients can one nurse be responsible for in the main ER at any given time - i.e. nurse-patient ratio? Is there a requirement for nurses to obtain a CEN? Can ER nurses do procedures like obtain arterial blood gases, write X-ray referrals, etc? How often are nurses required to chart a patient's vitals and status? Does every patient who is in the ER at any given time always have a nurse who is responsible for them? What are the main responsibilities of the charge nurse? Patients who are to be admitted to the hospital - where do they wait if no beds are available and who is responsible for them during the wait? Looking forward to and grateful for any answers :)