For Immediate Release Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Nurses concerned about patients in crowded emergency rooms
Calgary Registered Nurses say recent media coverage isn’t telling the whole story of the thousands of emergencies they deal with every day.
“It’s disheartening for nurses not to be able to let someone lie down, or to take care of their pain when there is no bed to put them in,” says, Louise O’Shaughnessy, a clinical instructor RN at the Rockyview General Hospital. “It’s hard to have to look out into a waiting room and not be able to do anything to help. There is NO place for them to lie down. There is no private room to put them in,”
She says that triage nurses have one of the most challenging jobs in nursing.
“They have less than five minutes to talk to someone, even with confusion or language barriers, in order to make a safe decision on that patient’s care. Often symptoms can be very subtle and difficult to assess in a fully clothed patient standing in front of you.”
And emergency nurses are increasingly dealing with very sick patients.
“Someone may be having a heart attack, a child may be critically ill, someone may be having a stroke, or in severe pain from an injury. A nurse has to handle this even when there is no bed available. The behind the scenes shuffling, just to clear a bed for one patient can take up the entire department,” she says.
“It’s very frustrating when it is suggested that improving communications skills will solve the problems when the fundamental problem is there is no place to put those patients.”
“Emergency nurses take the Region’s system problems on our shoulders,” says Louise O’Shaughnessy. “We take the brunt of frustration from the public.”
Jane Sustrik, RN United Nurses of Alberta Vice President says problems face Emergency room nurses all over the province.
The pressure cooker situation exacerbates short staffing problems, she says.
“The Emergency rooms are where we are seeing some of the worst of the critical shortage of Registered Nurses. It’s also where we have the worst cases of downward staffing spirals,” she says. “Nurses tend to leave jobs where they are constantly forced to work understaffed and under pressure. That makes the situation even worse. It’s happening in Emergency departments in hospitals right around the province.”
| 
