ER Nurses Blog

The global pandemic, which still continues, has forced many healthcare professionals including nurses to work under the constant and unrelenting pressures of overtime and patient loss. That conicides with a work culture and system that often works to undermine alleviating workload for frontline healthcare professionals. The brunt of this reality is held by nurses working amidst the effects of COVID, be it directly with patients, or the spillover from understaffed departments. Burnout is not only real, it's increasing. Nursing, and healthcare professionals, know that their job is fast-paced, sometimes at break neck speed, role that demands significant focus and investment in all ways. That level of service provision dminishes with constant pressures to offer quality care unders stress prolonged over months to years (as is the pandemic reality). This includes mental and physical weight that can have adverse effects on the profession, but most importantly on individual health. W...

It would appear that although ER nurses perform their duties seamlessly despite dealing with critical injuries in patients, this type of high level stress has impacts beyond the ER. A Master of Nursing student from the University of Calgary suggests that the work environment is not only stressful, but could have devastating consequences. Your thoughts on the short and long term damage on nurses in the ER?

How many of you care for patients in the ER who shouldn't really be there? At worst we're talking about psychiatric patients who sit in the ER and pose a physical threat to nurses. At best it is a drain on resources and impacts overall healthcare for those who really need it. Appropriate protocols and policies to streamline healthcare provision and ensure the right care is given to the needs of the patient are paramount elements to efficiency. When someone doesn't need to be an ER, or someone we should be transferred to another unit that can better provide for their needs isn't, everybody suffers. The issue can also lead to poor delivery of healthcare to patients who are in the wrong ward. And also as an added stress to the nurses who need to pay attention to patients maybe outside of their particular expertise. What protocols or policies do you have in place to mitigate? Or is this just part of delivering effective healthcare to all? Does it look different in for prof...

There was a time when nursing shoes were a distinct white flat. Before that, a distinct white mid-low heels. Crocs may be comfortable but who wants an open toe anyways? What shoe do you use at work? The popular choice is of course the day long sneaker. The choice of footwear is important since you're on your feet all day (plus it saves your back). Choices? Styles? Price points? What's your preference. One thing that's evident, if you can swing it try to get some more info on your feet. Even if it's the Dr. Scholls machine at the supermarket, knowing you have high, mid, or low arches impacts the shoe you purchase.

In the hardest hit regions of COVID-19, mostly due to bad public health policies, redeployment of nursing staff is one tool to staff ICUs. ER nurses are often the first to moved. But the skills aren't interchangeable. Each discipline has very specific competencies. Care suffers when different disciplines need to extend themselves. Here's another thread on the subject. Nurse redeployment & ICU capacity - LONG thread. Nurses aren't interchangeable. We're highly skilled, educated, evidence-informed professionals. The @canadanurses certifies 22 specialties from premature babies to burns to hospice, though there are almost 100 specialties. — Matthew J Douma (@matthewjdouma) September 26, 2021

As the slow incremental reforms in the American healthcare system amble forward, within the change lies great opportunity. In seeking to avert the collision course of an aging chronically ill population with a financial burden to maintain the current system, policy makers have had to reflect and discover a hitherto unrealized fact: nurses are the backbone of the health care system. This is both by virtue of their numbers and diversified involvement in caring for patients. With informatics being mandated into the health care system the nursing profession is in an ideal position to create a synergy between their work and technology. The Alliance for Nursing Informatics(ANI) is a collaboration of many nursing informatics groups whose goal is to represent with one voice nurse informaticists nationwide. ANI has stated that if health information technology is used in a ‘meaningful way’ along with best practice and evidence based care that health care will improve throughout the nation. In t...