What is the day to day life of an ER doctor like?

Question

Would u recommend it? Is it too stressful?

Answer 1

So, I am not a doctor, never have been. However, I did work in two different emergency rooms with doctors. It can be stressful, however, I would call your attention to the TV Show as an example. Most of the stressful scenarios you see on the show have nothing to do with the medicine end, but the personal end of their lives.

Basically, it is a lot of work, with constantly changing priorities and there is a lot of stress, but a well trained physician knows his drugs and his diagnostic abilities and can find a great deal of satisfaction in the work.

Answer 2

It depends on your personality type.  I work as a CNA in an ER, I will graduate high school pretty soon and then I plan to go to nursing school and work in a trauma center after graduation.  I love emergency medicine and the nurses and doctors I work with love it as well.  You have to have a passion for it, seeing people that sick all day long.  Otherwise it is just something you do and hate and you have no compassion for anyone.  

Working in the ER is really really stressful sometimes, and sometimes when things are slow it is so BORING.  But the great thing is you never know when something really good is going to come through the door.  You have to be on your A game all the time and you have to be ready for violent trauma and critically ill patients no matter what time of the day or night.  It can be a fairly quiet Tuesday night in the middle of June or July and then suddenly at say 2:30 AM a trauma patient can be rushed in almost dead.  

Working in the ER you deal with death and those who are dying and those who are you can't save on a daily basis.  You have to build some emotional barriers to be able to deal with this.  You also deal with those patients, like the "frequent fliers" or drug addicts who want meds or who are there because they OD'd on cocaine or whatever they are doing.  These patients are the most frustrating and stressful, I think.  I would much rather have a GSW to the chest or an MVA or a traumatic arrest than a drug addict patient.  

But, it just depends on who you are and what you are cut out for.  You really don't know if you can handle the big stuff until you are in a room having to take care of someone with something majorly wrong.  The first time you stick your hand in someone's chest or suction blood out of an airway or hear someone scream and beg and sob in pain and fear or watch someone die or attempt a resuscitation you will know if it is for you or not.  If it is you will feel the incredible rush and you will love it and want more, if it's not you will be the one in the hall hurling in the trash can.

Answer 3

We spend a lot of time on our feet. The amount of stress varies, but its origin probably isn't what you think. The patients, not the doctors, are the ones with the disease. The screaming and frenetic activity shown on TV may be good drama, but in the real world would show a lack of management skills. A calm, orderly approach to the occasional disaster is more usual. On the other hand, being pulled from pillar to post and having to juggle priorities and deal with interruptions is a problem. Most of the stress in many hospitals, though, is imposed by the hospital administration. Few administrators understand their emergency departments or particularly care to. For instance, boarding inpatients in ED's has been a problem leading to poor care, backlogs, and prolonged waiting times for years, but it's only of late that a few hospitals have been willing to start listening to their emergency physicians, and fewer still who are taking their advice.