Emergency Experience 1

Emergency Department Journal

Makayla Violette

March 17 2023

Critical Care Clinical Experience

Emergency Experience 2

During my experience in the emergency department I got to experience a wide variety of

different patients. We had a patient who had an active stroke, an attempted suicide, a chest pain

patient, and a patient who had an anxiety attack. They were all a variety of different ages and

situations. In the ED, there are a wide variety of different people. We have a set of doctors and

residents, many nurses, receptionists, and aides. Within the triage system there are 2 sets of

nurses who help to get a set of vitals and the chief complaints. With triage, we are able to care

for the most critical patients first to prevent further complications.

Depending on the patient's situation will depend on the location that patient will go to.

There were 3 different sections I saw within the ED. One was the psychiatric area where psych

patients are on a close observation and put into a suicide percaution room. Second, was a front

room where they would take patients who were not critical. These were patients who may be

coming in for cold or sinus infections. They may be treated within 1-2 hours and help to open up

the rooms in the main department of the ED for more critical patients. The last was the main ED

opening where they would take ambulance patients and anyone who is in need of immediate and

possible long term care. This part also had 4 trauma bays for extremely critical patients.

When discharging patients, we are going to give them information, all written down and

explained, about any follow up appointments, recent vital signs, medications the patient is going

home on, etc. If we are admitting them and transferring the patient to another floor in the

hospital, we would call for a nurse to nurse on the unit we would be transferring them to. We

would give the same information to them as we would in a shift hand off report.

One ethical concern I feel may happen in the ED would be that the nurses tend to deal

with so many different situations and people that they start to become numb to everything and

anything and they forget to show any compassion. They are always the first to see the frequent
Emergency Experience 3

flyers and they tend to get annoyed by them because they are constantly coming into the

emergency department and never getting admitted because they really do not need to be. Not

only that, but they also deal with so much trauma, since this is a level 1 trauma unit, they see a

lot of gunshot wounds, accidents, overdoses, etc. They become emotionless to many different

situations.

Overall, my experience was very educational. I got to experience an active stroke patient

and actually see all of the steps that we have learned about happen in person. I got to critically

think with the nurse about what medications we are going to give and all of the different criteria

for TKA. I also got to do numerous stroke scales every 15 minutes after administering the TKA

to the patient. My nurse was very educational and he helped tremendously. He was very open to

questions and I feel like not many emergency department nurses are like this. I absolutely would

recommend him for other students to go with because he is very good at teaching and making the

student feel comfortable with asking questions!