Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Calling all ER Nurses

Hey there all you adrenaline junkies...my hat's off to you! I don't know how you do it but I am glad you do! My question is how do you feel about your ER being invaded by floor nurses, who are clueless as to how your area works (such as myself), when you all are running short?
I got floated to ER "holding" yesterday and it was a friggen nightmare. My first time down there, no here's where your area is and here's who you can ask for help, no here's how we do things in a nutshell...just here's your rooms. I got stuck with a Registry ER nurse who was willing to help when she could, thank God, otherwise I'd have really lost it. The gave me not their floor or PCU holds...but the BHS (behavioral health) holds...all one to ones and a PCU hold..Then they started moving patients on me and not giving me report (apparently I was just supposed to research the pt myself or go find the nurse who sent them over). But, how was I supposed to know any of that? I get a transferred pt from another room, no report, I thought it was someone else's pt since I got no report...guess it was mine..she had a blown iv an was diabetic who hadn't had a blood sugar check since breakfast and hadn't eaten...VERY NICE. Then they kept tossing the BHS pt to me...then they wanted my to take an ER patient...I said, probably for the hundredth time, I am NOT and ER nurse...but they put her in there anyway..bp 75/50...VERY VERY nice. They said "Shawn will help you" well, I never saw "Shawn", the nurse who was doing discharges took one look at this lady and got to work...she ended up being moved out of my room to somewhere else and we looked at her blood work later...let's just say I don't think she made it.
Then they put another patient in that room and the chic who handled the last one says this one is yours, I just gave her that look...it was a 23yr old who took an overdose of somebody elses meds...also not my area of expertise.
I must tell you that at about 12:30 after the incident with the no-report-patient I called staffing and said that they needed to get me outta there...they said we really can't and sent the supervisor to talk to me...I told her I was very uncomfortable and was being given ER type patients not waiting to go to the floor type patients which I was told I would get...and that I wanted to leave. She listened to me blubber for about 10 minutes and said she would try to get someone to come in early...yeah, OK...meanwhile the Registry chic that was helping me had completely disappeared and I was left with Miss Attitude ER nurse who eventually just took all my patients and I got to go home. I guess they realized what I had been telling them all day...I was just in the way.
So, as ER Nurses, how do you feel when we non-ER nurses come to your area? I understand it would be different if you had a bunch of floor holds and I was there to take care of them...I'm just glad I got out without hurting anybody. Absolutely the worst day of my nursing career so far.
First do no harm.

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