Emergency Triage Nurses in a Maze
Millions of patients walk into emergency departments every year to get medical attention. With the proliferating of medical TV series, everyone seems to be amazed with the “24-hour action” hospital with emergency nurses running and treating critically injured victims.
But how does emergency room really work?
According to Dr. Carl Bianco, writer of How Emergency Room Works, the first step in the emergency department process is the emergency triage. A triage has an emergency nurse who categorizes and prioritizes the patient’s condition.
In emergency triage the patient’s situation is categorized into three groups:
1. immediately life threatening
2. urgent, but not immediately life threatening
3. less urgent
The emergency triage is also responsible for recording the patient’s vital signs which are temperature, pulse, respiratory rate and blood pressure. The emergency triage gets the brief patient history, medications, and allergies, to determine the appropriate category.
Registrations will be the next step. With the registration, additional information is obtained from the patient. Mainly insurance information, creation of medical record for reference while in the hospital. But for life threatening situations, like car crash of life threatening risk, registration can be completed later.
The patient will go next to the examination room where an emergency nurse will get more detailed information about the reason for the E.D. visit. There are certain hospitals that have divided their emergency department into areas dedicated to pediatric ED, a chest-pain ED, a fast track (for minor injuries and illnesses), trauma center (usually for severely injured patients) and an observation unit (for patients who do not require hospital admission but needs prolonged treatment or diagnostic tests).
After the nurse has completed her duty, the emergency physician will get a complete review of the information obtained from the patient. She then formulates a possible cause or diagnosis based on the symptoms.
Diagnostic tests are required when the physician sees that the patient’s symptom and physical examination failed to get a likely diagnosis. After conducting the diagnostic tests and identifying the probable diagnosis, necessary actions or steps are undertaken to treat the patient.
Normally, a scene from the ED can be chaotic and confusing for a victim of patient’s family. A long line of patients wanting to be examined could be a dreadful sight. There are some people who have tried to get medical attention to no avail.
Donna Mason, an emergency nurse gave CNN five things to remember in an ER:
1. Inform your doctor if you will be going to the emergency room.
2. Use the ambulance specifically for threatening situations.
3. If the triage is not being helpful in addressing the case, speak up and look for the person in charge.
4. It is always important to control temper. It is also important not to lie about your symptoms, just to get attention ahead of the others.
5. If things are really getting bad and no one from the emergency department is helping, look for a house phone and inform the issue to the hospital administrator or patient advocate who is available 24 hours.
Emergency department experiences can be tough and rough. It is necessary for patients to understand how things work, and understand why sometimes will take a while to address patient issues. Emergency rooms are a maze filled with emergency nurses who are more than happy to take care of the patients.