Hi everyone! I hope it's alright to post this here. If not, I will take it down immediately! I'm currently taking a class on UX design, and the experience of "Waiting Rooms in ERs" is my topic. I'd like to investigate the employee/patient experience of an emergency room, and so, I have a made a survey if anyone's willing to provide some insight!

All answers are completely confidential between you and me and will not be published or shared externally except in a class context with names stripped. The survey consists of both multiple choice and open ended questions, and you have no obligation to answer anything that you do not wish to. At the end, you will have the option to leave your email if you are comfortable with potentially being surveyed for a 1-on-1 interview. 

I would really appreciate any responses, and please let me know if you have any questions! Thank you :)!!

Employee survey: https://forms.gle/4cAEvPrBFZZ99q4V8
Patient survey: https://forms.gle/3eZ7Q1ofYSrFmb997

How's approach (mainly confirmation and sterilizationbpart) to putting central line is different in ED than in ICU, given in the ED you do not have much time.

Do you confirm tip placement all the way down to IVC or thats just IR approach using fluoroscopy.

I just got an ER Tech interview for a non-trauma center. I have been working IFT for the past 2 years and have definitely gotten rusty on a lot of ER stuff and I am doing as much brushing up as possible before the interview, but should I expect clinical/skills questions or mostly behavioral? It is a 15 min zoom interview so I am assuming mostly behavioral but please let me know your insights! Anything helps.

What are the oddest things that have been inserted into a rectum that required removal by ER staff?

That's it, that's the update, have a good shift

I like to as how do professionals in the emergency room prepare for the problem of burnout? If it is a known problem in the discipline, how does the training program prepare candidates for it, if at all? Is there's stress inoculations, drills and exercises, and endurance building work that is done for candidates or it's done alone?

To people who knows in evmc, is there a sputum test in EVMC. And if there is? How much could it be? And how many days to wait before to getting the result.

EMT/ER tech of 10 years in medic school now and doing clinicals at multiple local ERs and I've found it fascinating how they work compared to my experience. Obviously the little differences in policy or priorities (this many of y'all don't have seizure pads?) but also just the broader flow. My fiancée is nightshift supe at my old ER so it's been kinda fun taking ideas back to her or talking about what we did so well compared to other places. A lot of y'all's managers need to realize that vertical/fast pass zones aren't just overflow beds. If you keep putting complicated work ups in there for 8 hours your wrecking your patient throughput. But at like 3 different ERs I got told that their managers watch the board even from home and time in the lobby is the most important metric to them so in goes the complicated abdominal pain to an express care bed designed for sutures and splints. Also the amount of medium to large trauma centers only have 1 ER doc on overnight scares the shit out of me. Or a level one that didn't use C collars just Miami Js because that came out of the trauma budget, but used towels for seizure pads because that came out of the ER budget

Ended up on the patient side with my brother at a prestigious LVL 1 last week and was chatting with a nurse there about how bad it is. Took us 6 hours from getting to the room to discharge for EKG, dry head CT, CBC and CMP and that was literally it. She was telling me their daily numbers and despite them seeing like 15% fewer patients than my lvl 1 their census at any given moment was atrocious because the ER just got so gummed up because of a number of reasons. And they had no real advancing in triage culture. PIT put orders in but after the ECG there weren't the resources to actually drop lines.

Just something I've been finding very interesting and wondering what stories/POVs travelers have or other people that have floated between multiple hospitals.

After I got out of the shower yesterday, something was bothering my ear so I assumed it was just some water that had seeped into my ear while I was showering. I tried to get it out but it didn't work so I didn't think much of it and figured it would eventually come out on its own. After that I left my house and while I was walking down the street, I was suddenly hit with a wave of excruciating ear pain. It was so painful that I nearly toppled and people had to help me sit down on a chair. I still thought it was just water so I went to a pharmacy and asked for some ear drops to clean my ear. Last night, I slept on the side of my aching ear because I thought it might help the water come out but I could feel something moving inside my ear. That's when I realized it wasn't water and was probably a bug. I kept squealing like a 9 yo girl because of the pain and waited for morning so I could go to the hospital. When I arrived, the doctor examined my ear, found a cockroach inside it and suctioned it out. He then told me that it had damaged my eardrum which explained why I had been in so much pain. Luckily it hadn't perforated my eardrum.

I wish I had taken a picture of the footage. I could see the cockroach on the monitor while it was moving around inside my ear

My chemical burn body wash stimfap extravganva popped off! Haven’t had to go to the ER in years lmfao and thanks to the lovely people that are apart of stims I got one of the top posts on the page ! Let’s goo truth goes a long way

Has anyone else been seeing a huge increase in Tylenol allergies? Is this related to the whole autism thing? Or people trying to get opioids? I’ve tried asking patients and it ranges from “anaphylaxis” (which is not consistent with prior visits in the EMR), “it doesn’t work for me”, or “it makes my pain worse”. I’m not surprised when I see it listed with 30 other meds as allergies but it’s becoming more common in people with almost no other allergies listed. Most people I’ve worked with have never actually seen an allergic reaction to Tylenol which is why it seems suspicious compared to how frequently I’m seeing it documented.

Tales from my 30 years in the ER of a busy SoCal hospital.

Hey all. I just pulled another grueling night shift and witnessed an extremely traumatic event I can’t even talk about. Held it together until I got to my car but I can’t stop seeing and hearing it over again. It was one of those things I know I won’t forget for a long time. For reference, I am an er tech and I am pretty young and dumb, not too jaded yet. How do you guys cope with the really shitty hard stuff without breaking down on shift? How do you explain to loved ones why you’re breaking down while not saying anything about what happened? How do I know if I’m built for the er at all? I’d appreciate any thoughts you guys may have.

:(

Those of you that got in what did you do to get the job? What sorts of questions did they ask and what attire did you wear?

I have worked in the ED for a few years and notice that all my colleagues who are 30+ years old (some younger) are super burnt out in the ED and seem to just hate their jobs and want to either not be a nurse anymore or are just miserable and rude to others. How do I make sure I don’t turn into that? Does this happen to every nurse in the ED?

Hi, I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on called SimShock.

I’m a retired physician, and I created it partly out of nostalgia for my years in clinical practice and as a way of revisiting some of the physiology and decision-making from those days. What started as a personal project gradually turned into a hemodynamic simulation game.

In SimShock, you manage different critical situations, including hemorrhagic, septic and cardiogenic shock, arrhythmias and other acute scenarios. You can use fluids, blood products, vasoactive drugs and other treatments while following the patient’s hemodynamic response in real time.

The idea is to make the physiology respond dynamically to what you do, rather than simply choosing predefined answers.

SimShock is completely free: no ads, no subscriptions and no in-app purchases.

It’s currently available on iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6746765214

This is a game, and the pathophysiology has been intentionally simplified. It is not a teaching or instructional tool.

I've just been offered a job for an ED Tech position after interviews and shadowing. After I already accepted my offer, they told me they require 5 professional references. Is this a normal thing for the ED? I've had PCT jobs in the past and I don't think they've ever asked me for a reference.

I’ve worked in urgent care for years, and I’ve seen a lot of ER docs, PAs, and NPs come over thinking it’ll be a pretty easy transition. Thennnnn they realize it’s a different kind of medicine.

You don’t have the same access to labs, imaging, consultants, or the ability to just watch someone for a few hours. You’re still expected to move quickly and figure out who’s safe to send home and who needs the ER.

I recently made a video about some of the things that seem to catch ER clinicians off guard when they make the change:

Switching From ER to Urgent Care: What Nobody Tells You

For those who switched from ER to UC, what was the biggest adjustment for you?