Should Emergency Nursing be part of the Critical Care Nursing Specialty on this site?

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  1. Should Emergency Nursing be moved to the Critical Care Nursing Subspecialty Forum

132 members have participated

Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.

This issue has been much discussed under the Emergency Nursing Forum prior to the new upgrade. With the upgrade making Critical Care Nursing a link in the above tab, do you think it is time to move emergency nursing to that subspecialty?

I certainly do. Great arguments have been made (in the Emergency Nursing Forum)to support it being a critical care specialty.

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Specializes in Education, Administration, Magnet.

I voted yes because they deal with critical patients every day. And the CRNA schools in my area accept ER as critical care experience in order to get into the program.

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.

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Will this mean that there will only be a CC forum and not a separate one for ER? ER seems like an obvious critical care area, but I must admit that I like going straight to the ER forum to see ER specific topics...

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

I have no opinion myself. Not every patient that comes into the ER is a critical patient, so I can see why it isn't in with the critical care tab. On the other hand, many of the patients are critical, so you have a point. ER nurses must be critical care trained.

Good luck with your poll.

Are you going to present the results to Brian when you're done?

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Specializes in cardiac/critical care/ informatics.

ED is not considered critical care, it is it's own speciality. ED don't get CCRN they get a different certification, CEN?

Just my 2 cents.

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I think they are different types of nursing. ED does the initial triage/treatment of the critically ill, where ICU maintains and manages them for loner periods of time. Our ED does not use a lot of our gtts or place swans, do CVVH, IABPs etc. ICU nurses dont have the stress of turning over a great number of patients in a few hours. In the ICU your pt may be very sick, but its the only one you have. The ED never knows what will come through the door and has to be ready for it every second of their shift.

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.
Will this mean that there will only be a CC forum and not a separate one for ER? ER seems like an obvious critical care area, but I must admit that I like going straight to the ER forum to see ER specific topics...

I don't think so because if you look under the specialty tab, you see 5 forums:

CCU - (Coronary/Cardiac)

MICU and SICU

NICU - Neonatal (29 Viewing)

Neuro Intensive Care (10 Viewing)

PICU (Pediatric) (3 Viewing)

I was hoping to see that Emergency Nursing could be the 6th forum

The ER forum would be a lot easier to reach and find if it were put under the CC specialty tab than it is now, (being under the nursing specialty tab).

(Also, as a side note, I think that a trauma nursing forum should be added as a critical care specialty-but, that's just my opinion---I just think that Emergency and Trauma Nurses [also, Burn & Transport] are being short-changed in people's minds as to the skills performed and the acuity levels that must be managed.)

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Specializes in Cardiac.

If you were in my ER, you'd see far more psych pts than critical care patients!

That being said, I almost never vote in public polls.

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.
I have no opinion myself. Not every patient that comes into the ER is a critical patient, so I can see why it isn't in with the critical care tab. On the other hand, many of the patients are critical, so you have a point. ER nurses must be critical care trained.

Good luck with your poll.

Are you going to present the results to Brian when you're done?

I did this more to find out what others outside of the ED think about what emergency nurses do and how others, outside of the ER, view emergency nursing.

You bring up a good point that not all that enter the ER are critical; but, they usually go straight to fast track and bypass the main ED. You never know what will come through that door and must be prepared, in a split second, to handle anything. This certainly requires critical care skills, and more... Just yesterday, in addition to 5 other patients, I had a severe lower GI bleed (BP unstable, tetering on hypovolemic shock) that was being held until surgery was available, while trying to manage another patient in resp. distress and pending septic shock, needing intubation the moment I finished report-eventually getting transduced, on a levo & insulin drip. I had 7 patients at a single point in time, not one with a minor problem. ICU was full, so in addition to the 2 critical patients (normal load for the ICU nurse) I had the others to care for. I do think that I demonstrated critical care ++++ nursing.

I originally didn't have plans to present the results to Brian-what do you think about doing that?

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.
ED is not considered critical care, it is it's own speciality. ED don't get CCRN they get a different certification, CEN?

Just my 2 cents.

ED nurses can get CCRN, in addition to CEN. The critical care nursing association recognizes emergency nursing as a critical care specialty. In fact, I am planning to take my CCRN exam next month & already have my CEN

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Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Trauma ICU, Neuro ICU.

I'm new here but I think that Emergency Nursing being thought of as being a critical care specialty shouldn't be an issue. Why is it an issue?

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