ERnurse 60

I have worked in two community hospital ER's. In neither do we get a break. We just wolfed down our lunch in the break room. When we tried to put in for no lunch, management said we had to make time for a break. That our coworkers had to take over our patients for 30 minutes. Really! They could takeover 4 additional patients?!. You would just be behind the rest of the shift. We are there for 12-13 hours with no break. They just don't get it, nor do they care. Where I work now is much less busy, so there is time for a break. But we still don't leave the ER.

What I can't stand anymore is that patients are now "customers", or consumers of health care. And they are running the show. Our boss was on the phone with a patient's mother for days, making sure she was satisfied, and telling her to be sure to call if she had any problems with the ER staff again. The problem? Her daughter, (who had been through rehab twice), did not get pain meds. The patient's PMD had specifically instructed that the patient not be given pain meds. And that's just one incident, there are many more. Keep those patient satisfaction survey's coming.

Not exactly the thread topic, but as an ER nurse, we often have parents bring in kids to have us medicate them. "They won't take it for me". Are you kidding, who's running the show?

I worked in a very busy community ER. We were taken over by a large urban hospital, who felt that nurses were a dime a dozen, and treated us that way. After two or three nurses left, they refused to fill the positions. They told us that "when you can become more productive, you will get more staff". I almost laughed in her face, that makes no sense, if we could be more productive, we wouldn't need more staff! When the HCAP scores went way down, we got more staff. I sometimes wonder what planet these people are from. LOL