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The acuity in our ER is off the charts. Sometimes I feel like I work on a med/surg/tele floor, not an ER.Gone are the days of fractures, lacerations, etc. that used to be what an ER did, replaced by the chronically ill. The people who have 3 or 4 underlying illnesses and now they are having an exacerbation of one,
or some other problem. They are the kind of people that get the $10,000 work up. They are the difficult IV start, the people that need to be cathed, etc. They take a lot of time and are there for hours. A lot of them are morbidly obese and we break our backs trying to take care of them..
Other folks in the ER these days: people on medicaid who use us as a clinic. The thing is these days, with the patient satisfaction sweepstakes, even these people are way overtreated. Hint of nausea: IV, zofran, a multitude of labs. I actually had a provider recently order Morphine for someone who HAD NO PAIN. No, sorry I am not giving a narcotic to someone with no pain.
We don't have enough staff to handle the increasing acuity. We won't be getting any more any time soon. I am starting to think that I've had enough. Tired of the stress. Tired of feeling like a truck ran over me at the end of the shift. Tired of not having enough staff. I had a plan of when I would leave and I think it will come a lot sooner than that.
4 comments:
I felt like that...Then I went and worked in an animal hospital. It's been a year. ..The money is bad but I love working again. I can sleep at night and I even have a life away from work.
I pick up a shift in my old er every now and then if the bills ad up.
I got out about 9 months ago after a 10 year sentence in the ER and it was the best decision EVER!! life is too short to spend so much of it surrounded by stress and negativity.
"A ten year sentence" thats funny and so accurate. I have told me husband its like going to jail.
My hospital had a lot of morbidly obese patients too and we would always spend HOURS treating the same person every 3 months, when he should have been directed to a care center. Total waste of resources. What I don't get either is why many of the nurses I work with are also obese (maybe they aren't morbid but heavy enough to have trouble doing basic exercises) I don't understand how they don't look around them and see the consequences and health effects of weight - hello! we just did a gastric bypass on a man that died! Why some nurses don't eat right and don't get it together is beyond me. Ok, sorry about the rant. You're not in it alone. Btw, the morphine thing - I can't sleep at night often cause I've administered morphine to narcotics.. doctors orders though. How can I object on my superior? Woe is me.
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