Happy Emergency Nurses Week 2017
I have seen this meme many times and it never gets old, nor is there any better representation for the duties of an Emergency Department RN. This meme sums up in a nutshell the crazy side of what being an Emergency Nurse is all about. In honor of Emergency Nurses week, I thought I would honor my fellow nurses and co-workers with a blog post dedicated to all of the hardworking Emergency Nurses out there.
ED RNs are a special breed of nurse, we have to be ready for anything that can and will be thrown at us in a shift. I mean this both literally and figuratively as we have to be ready for any trauma, medical alert, or complicated situation thrown our way. But we also have to watch out as it is not uncommon for our patients to actually throw blood, sweat, urine, punches, objects, sputum, and feces at us. Now nurses everywhere have to worry about this as well, but what makes our situation unique is that most of the time, if a patient is going to act out, they are going to do it in the Emergency Department first and we will then be able to warn our counterparts to be aware of future similar situations. I myself have been assaulted by a patient before and having the courage to return to work everyday after being mistreated in this type of way is the biggest hurdle one has to overcome. But even after being yelled at, cursed at, struck physically, verbally and emotionally assaulted, we return for more beatings and do it without asking for any acknowledgement or special treatment. We continue to help others in the hopes that what we do will make a difference.
Being an Emergency Nurse is not for the faint of heart, we deal with death and birth on a daily basis. As a healer you want to always be able to save lives but death is a part of life as well, and as much as we hate to admit it, patients do die in the Emergency Department. It is never easy to take care of a patient that takes a turn for the worse unexpectedly or to do your best taking care of a trauma that doesn't make it out of surgery. In the Emergency department it is often very hard to see progress of the patients we have taken care of. Patients come to us, we stabilize them and either they die, are discharged, or are admitted to the hospital. Our sickest patients always get admitted or pass away and because of HIPPA laws we do not get to see the progress and outcomes of our admitted patients. We always live in uncertainty as to if our actions and care actually helped our patients. It is extremely hard to continue to be a healer when you are unsure if your services are actually helping others.
Our jobs are the most stressful, emotions are always at a high peak in the Emergency department whether it be from patients, families, or staff. In critical situations you have to learn how to work fast, efficiently, and prioritize. One wrong move in a critical situation and it can be the difference between life or death for a patient. When you work at a teaching hospital, all of these situations can be magnified and stress is at an all time high. You want to be able to teach new medical students and doctors but at the same time you have to be able to weed out what is best for the patient. It is not uncommon for tensions to rise in these critical situations and for staff to yell at each other or create a hostile work environment. I have personally been in many situations in which doctors are arguing and fighting over the best course of treatment, nurses and doctors are not seeing eye to eye, and co-workers are belittling each other.
Patient family members can also make or break a hairy situation. It is extremely hard to see families torn apart and react to the news of losing a loved one. Some family members are grateful for your services and know that you did everything that you possibly could for the patient while others tend to blame you and the rest of the staff for the death. Neither one of these situations makes you feel any better. Even if the family members are grateful for your services, nurses naturally like to over analyze situations and place the blame on themselves. We like to think, "What could we have done differently to save them? If I would have been faster at putting in the IV would they have lived?". No matter the situation, a nurse is most likely always going to blame themselves for the loss of a patient and carry that experience with them for the rest of their life.
In the Emergency Department, nurses are always understaffed. Yes, there are times when we send staff home when census is low, but most of the time we go through a shift without a lunch or bathroom break. We care more about taking care of our patients than taking care of ourselves. We do the best we can with the staff that we have each shift to keep the waiting room empty and our patient satisfaction scores high. We may have our max amount of patients but if a serious trauma or critical patient comes in, we step up to help our coworkers. I can't recall how many times I have been working the trauma rooms and we get back to back critical patients with no open rooms or nurses to take care of the patients. However, we always find a way to make it work, nurses come from all areas of the Emergency Department to assist when it is needed. We work together as one team and do our best to make sure that no patient or nurse gets left behind.
Being an Emergency nurse is back breaking, nerve clenching, adrenaline rushing, hard work. Many nurses say that the Emergency room is too stressful to work your entire career in and that I should consider transferring to a different department. The Emergency department is so stress ridden that we have a very high turn over rate for our hospital and some nurses never even make it off orientation before they are re-homed to a different department. I have been an ER nurse at my hospital for just a little over 2 years now and on my shift I am pretty high up on the seniority list. This means that soon I will be expected to help train new RNs in our department, and while this scares me as I feel like I still have so much to learn, it also excites me to know that I have had the endurance to stick it out longer than most. However, I cannot see myself wanting to do anything different with my nursing license at this point in my career. I love my job, I love my coworkers, I love that every day is different and a new challenge I have to overcome. Everyday is a new experience and I am not only learning something new about medicine but I am also learning something new about myself.
So Happy Emergency Nurses Week to all of my fellow ED Nurses! This week isn't just about getting free food and gifts from management. It is a time to celebrate our accomplishments and our learning experiences. It is a week dedicated to reflecting back on our past experiences in order to make new ones. It is a chance to thank other ED RNs for their contributions and hard work. This is a celebration of all of the crap (literally and figuratively) that we have had to endure this last year. Thank you to all of the ED RNs out there for all that you see and do!