ER Nurses Blog

The tension between administration and patient care in American healthcare can be clearly seen in the emergency department. Emergency-room nurses work at the front line of a system that must be ready for anything, yet many increasingly find themselves working within layers of administrative requirements that have little to do with actually caring for patients. The problem is not that hospitals need administrators. It's how many.  Effective leadership, scheduling, finance, quality improvement and regulatory oversight are essential. However, when the entire healthcare system depends on profit maximizing insurance companies, the exponential growth of administrative work has become disproportionate to the resources available for bedside nursing. A distinction matters. Administrative “bloat” is often used to describe unnecessary management positions, excessive bureaucracy and organizational layers. But administrative burden also comes from insurers, prior-authorization requir...

Are you overworked? Working double 12 hour shifts? COVID got you working 2 years of overtime? What are you doing, or your unit, to ensure nurses and doctors are well rested and prepared for their shifts? Or what could be done to improve work place conditions? Looking to hear from those who've tried some new things and have found success (or failures)

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.