1. Unlike most specialists, you need to know how to treat people of all ages and needs.
Emergency nursing is considered a nursing specialty, but we’re also generalists. We take care of children and the elderly, pregnant patients and psychiatric patients, patients with special needs — you name it, we do it. It’s essential to regularly brush up on medical information and keep current in your continuing education, because you have to be prepared for any kind of patient to walk through the door.
2. Deciding who to treat first is really, really hard.
We do get the stereotypical “emergency” cases — heart attacks or trauma victims — but we also see patients who are not able to get care from a primary care physician. A triage nurse will do an “across-the-room survey” to see who needs to be seen immediately and who can wait a little longer. In most emergency departments, only experienced nurses [with] advances certifications perform triage.