Is anyone a nurse in an ER? ?

Question

I'm thinking of taking nursing classes if I can get in. But what's it like once you finish school? I'd like to work in a hospital or ER. Do you get thrown right in or are you w/ somone for awhile learning what to do?

Answer 1

y not watch the show called "ER"

Answer 2

When you are in nursing school you think you are learning so much and that you are so smart and so ready. And you really are learning a lot. But when you hit the floor you find out that you don't know how much you don't know. It kind of brings you down a bit.

Good hospitals have long orientation periods for their new grads and new hires. Just throwing people in and hoping they will float causes a high failure rate and it's not good for the new nurse or the patients. Our hospital has almost 6 months orientation for new ER nurses. It takes about 2 years of full time working to make a good ER nurse. And about 5 years to make a really, really good ER Nurse.

Remember that you will be seeing people at their worst. The burn out rate for ER staff is high because it's hard to always have to be ready for anything. You will be taking care of 4 patients at a time, usually. Let's just say you have a little boy with a broken arm from falling off his skate board; a little old lady with abdominal pain; a young lady with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea; and then an ambulance brings you a middle aged man with chest pain. Everybody needs/wants your attention at once. The ER doctors are writing you orders on each of your patients, IV's need to be started, meds need to be given, patients need to go to x-ray and labs need to be drawn.

Or maybe you have the drunk patient that wants to fight, and the teenage overdose, and the psychiatric patient that is hearing voices, and the woman that just got stabbed by her jealous boyfriend. You see how this goes?

My point is... it's a hard job. It's very stressful, and ER nurses like to act like it doesn't bother them in the least. Any sign of personal weakness is bad and usually won't be tolerated among staff members. If it bothers you that someone stabbed his girlfriend in the liver and poured gasoline on her and set her on fire(a real patient that I had) and the poor white girl comes in with all her clothes burned off and looks like a black woman because she is so burned ... then the ER isn't the place for you.

I hope that helps.