Veroniche
Western Region, US
Female, 54
I’ve been an ER nurse manager since 2009. Previously, I spent 24 yrs as an ER nurse. My hospital, a Level III trauma center, sees 70,000+ ER patients/yr. My responsibilities include billing, federal/state regulation oversight, metrics reporting, software education of e-records, and hiring/termination/disciplinary actions. The ER is one of the key impacted areas of healthcare reform. It’s a scary and exciting time for us, not just in the care of patients, but what the future holds for healthcare.
Individual liberty--feel strongly about it! With great privilege, however, come great responsibilities. Freedom without responsibility is anarachy. Responsibility without freedom is slavery. I think greater people than me said those things before.... As Americans, we have individual liberty, and also responsibility to others. Letting uninsured people die--what kind of question is that? That's kind of like asking the question "when did you stop beating your wife?" I think you can come up with a more thoughtful and informed question than that. Let me help you think about what you are trying to perhaps ask-- Is there a limit to what... Read More +
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Our ER has 53 beds, not including the gurneys we put in the halls for the overflows. We are full by 11 AM and stay that way until about 2 AM, then slowly empty out and start all over again. Each nurse cares for about four patients at a time, fewer if the patients are really sick, and more if the illness is minor. We have a good sense of busiest days and times of days. All of the staff, including hospital administration, is very aware of our wait times because it is a marketing and advertising draw. ERs in this area are very competitive and want to make the ER visit for the patient as painless as possible. 85% of our patients are seen... Read More +
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They are dirty because they need to be cleaned more! We have three bathrooms for 58 patients, and two public restrooms. They are cleaned once a shift (three times a day), and more if we call them, but it is hard to keep up with them. When the budget trimmers come around, housekeeping is looked at as a non-patient care item, so sometimes the axe falls with those type of departments first. However, a lot of the hospital complaints have to do with cleanliness and I would agree that we don't give that as high of a priority as we should. You can tell a lot about a place by how clean it is/or not. And that is not even taking into account all... Read More +
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ER nurses are a special breed! Type A, mavericks, strong personalities who won't take a lot of crap from other nurses. Most of us love the fast-paced environment of the ER--the constantly changing patients, the interesting and strange things that we see on a daily basis. There is a "detective" element to this nurse--what is wrong with this patient? It is a challenge to take a patient who may only say "I don't feel good" and figure out what is wrong and help make them better. Many love the "blood and guts" and we have been called adrenalin junkies. We work very independently, and need to make quick decisions that may have life or death... Read More +
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McDonald's Manager
Did you have to deal with a lot of disrespectful customers? What would they say?
Correctional Officer
Were there a lot of suicides in your prison, and what's the most common way prisoners do it?
Server / Bartender
How much more do female servers get tipped?
The creepiest thing I have seen, I wouldn't call it bizarre, but I will never forget it--a patient came in with his arm amputated just above the wrist in a farming accident. When there is a chance to put the part back on, there is always a staff member whose responsibility is to take care of the amputated part. In this case, it was me. I opened the cooler (the patient had been flown in from a rural area), and the arm was just lying there in a plastic bag in a container on ice. It reminded me of "Thing" from the Addams Family. I almost expected the hand to climb out of the cooler by itself. By the way, the surgeons were able to reattach... Read More +
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You got a morphine drip for a tonsil infection? Sweet!!! Seriously—the premise of all emergency visits from the perspective of the physician is that we look for the things that are going to kill you first, and then work down from there. A severe tonsillitis can cause obstruction in a person’s breathing, or cause an abscess in the tonsil that is a surgical emergency. A level 5 charge sounds totally appropriate (without reviewing your medical record, of course). How the ER charges for the care is determined by the federal government. There are 5 levels, 1 being the least (like stitches being removed), up to a level... Read More +
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I’m afraid I don’t have a wonderfully inspiring story of how I got into the nursing field. I would love to be able to say that the life of Florence Nightingale drew me into nursing, but it was a lot simpler than that. I was originally a music/piano major, and came to the realization that I did not want to practice the piano the rest of my life. At that point I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, but needed a direction. Many of my friends on my dorm room floor were nursing students and I thought “I could do that,” and that’s how it started! Once I got into the classes and clinicals, I loved it!
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