During my experience in the emergency department, many different types of individuals

were present. The type of people varied from middle to later aged individuals with different

problems such as COPD, urinary tract infection, and hypertensive crisis. There were many

nurses, transport individuals, pca’s, physicians and student nurse externs. The nurses were in

charge of keeping patient’s stable and providing the appropriate care as ordered. Transport would

move patients to other floors or facilities/home as needed. The PCA’s would help the nurses

draw labs during the admission process. The student nurse externs would also assist in providing

care for patients per nurse request. The physicians were nearby checking on patients and

providing orders as needed. The triage was extremely important because this allowed the nurse’s

to have an organized way of getting labs from the patient’s to be sent to the laboratory to be

evaluated. The triage area allowed for a quick and efficient process of knowing how to treat

patient’s and what the next step included in caring for these patient’s. The triage area allowed to

gather patient’s in an area in which most critical were to be treated first and the rest of the people

to follow. The method for bed placement in the ER is different than other hospital floors. The

method of bed placement is to rate each patient by admitting complaints on a scale from one to

four. A patient rated a one is most critical and needs to be placed immediately while a patient

rated four is not as critical and can wait to be seen after the other critical patients are seen. A

patient discharged to home from the ER are required to have follow up appointments with

individuals who will continue to care for ongoing diseases/complications. The nurse’s role with

admitting patients to the acute care is to ensure that bed availability is there in addition to making

sure the appropriate floor placement is made in regard to the patient’s illness severity. One

ethical concern within the ER is negligence. Sometimes when other patient’s are more critical

than another patient’s waiting to be seen can cause further damage to someone not as critical. It
is important to make sure everyone is seen by the health care team in a timely fashion to prevent

further deterioration in a patient. Overall, my experience in the ED was beneficial and allowed

me to see patients who were extremely sick in the moment and how to care for these patients. I

had the ability to help answer concerns, draw labs and perform assessments. I would recommend

this clinical for students in the future.