A Walk in the Shoes of an ER Nurse
Think your job is tough? Spend 12 hours doing triage
Three times a week around 7 a.m., 26-year-old Anisa Mertiri enters Montefiore Medical Center's Weiler Division in the Bronx, N.Y., to begin a 12-hour shift. She is a triage nurse, a critical and punishing job in an emergency department that handled some 220,000 patients in 2007, making it one of the five busiest in the country.
Triage nurses are like air traffic controllers, except that people are less predictable than planes. Mertiri may see 70 patients during her shift, sometimes in bursts, and may have to decide in a few seconds who can wait and who can't. But she has been tested. "When I just started, we had a man walk in who was stabbed seven times in the chest," she recalls. The 17-year-old "man" lived.
Entering through the front door into a waiting area about the size of a small classroom or on a gurney through the automatic doors of the ambulance entrance, all ER patients converge on triage. It is a cramped, windowless room with a small white desk, a few chairs, and several "vital signs machines"—an aggregation of gear atop a wheeled pole to measure blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and blood oxygen.
When the ER is busy, triage is jammed with patients, family members, nurses, aides, and paramedics, all in a hurry. On a Monday, the busiest day, Mertiri and the other triage nurses can see 220 patients in 24 hours. Patients are assessed for urgency from 1 (unconscious or unresponsive) to 5 (sore throat, bruises) based on vital signs, complaints, appearance, and history. Level 1 patients are seen immediately, level 2 within 15 minutes, and the others less quickly. The lowest-ranked patients are shunted to the "Blue Zone," where they can be given lab tests and medications and sent home within a few hours.
Mertiri loves the work. She left her native Albania at 17 to finish high school under the scorched palms of San Benito, Texas, then went north to nursing school in Corpus Christi. Mertiri was drawn to emergency care when she did her clinical rotation through the various hospital departments. "It's fast-paced, you see a lot of patients, and you see a wider group of people," she says.
Reader Comments
I enjoyed Anisa's story
I am a bit alarmed at the posts to this story. Lots of grammar and spelling errors.Are you sure you are R.N.s? And could the English gap be responsible for so many medical mistakes? Just a question.
ER
I am currently working in ER in Ja, if you think you have it rough, spend a few hour here. Many Jamaican watch these medical shows and see the fast pace and believe that we are idling. No manner how you tell them that right now in USA that is one of the election debate they just think you are trying to fool them into submission.
We have institute the ESI triage system and it worked well. It prevent the subjectivity in assigning clients priority. As well allow for the re-assignment of doctors to various areas based on the number of clients in a particular ESI.
But beside it all I really love working in the ER, as the fast pace and thinking on your feet is what realy love, also to see the response of clients to treatment.
ED Nursing
I have been an ED RN for 25 years and still love it. I feel that every day is a challenge and while some days more than others I would not change my profession. I am however disheartened by the nures who continually feel overworked, overwhelmed, must "go Union", put up with "bad" attitudes from peers, etc., instead of trying to see the positive and if no positive is in sight to take the innitive and make try to make change for the better. Life is what you make of it and I feel that instead of "bitchin" we need to pull up our big girl panties, take care of our patients, families and each other and make our workplace and profession what we want it to be without the negativity and blame.
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