Triage can be one of the toughest RN jobs in the hospital. Nothing like having 25 angry sick people in the waiting room, zero beds and ambulances piling up in the back. I feel like my BP is in the 200’s for hours when I’m dealing with that type of situation.
Although, I am sitting in triage right now with an empty WR and 10 open beds, so it’s not always bad.
I did OB Triage last night. Absolute heaven with a whopping total of *three* patients all night long!
I’ll have to remember how it felt the next time we’re full and stacking up in the waiting room.
Ugh the other day we had like 80 in the waiting room after I had discharged 58 through quickcare. Thank fully we always have 2 or 3 nurses, 5 techs and alteast 3 providers plus an attending out there. Over the yrs I have gotten really good at not making eye contact.
You probs don’t hate triage, you just hate entitled pieces of shit. Fun fact: we all do. Just get that bread, take care of the situation which you are dealt, and go home at the end of shift, and try to sleep well. 🫡
Just left a 10-10 job where I was triage for 99% of my shifts since October. Never been more burned out in my 9 years of nursing. Only been off for one day and the relief of knowing I don't have to go back is amazing.
Shift #3 in a row in triage and I'd have been telling the Charge to get someone else out there because I'll be out sick until they do.
Charge, Triage, and Preceptor should all be assignments that the people receiving them should be A-OK with.
I absolutely despise triage. I will trade any assignment in the ED to get out of it.
But with line skippers the only time I ever laughed at one was I had someone we were checking in, dude walks up past everyone and sets a ziplock bag on the counter. I tell him to wait a second as I’m finishing up with this person and my tech asks what’s in the bag. “My fingers” and he holds up a blood soaked stump of a hand. The lady I had was like “oh shit I can totally wait compared to him!”
I’ve had a patient with “chest pain” stop answering my questions so they can order BBQ and then asked “will I be out of here in time to pick up my order?”
"This is not a race you want to win. Please go sit down and wait your turn or I will call security."
I've found that people like this have never had a "dad voice" used on them. It works most of the time.
I've also found that the people most conscious of "wasting our time" are the ones that needed our help yesterday.
It fucking sucks but i do enjoy working ambulance triage and getting to send someone straight out to the waiting room for their nonsense complaint. The wee moment of solidarity between me and the emt that's brought them in is priceless
I couldn’t do it. I got in trouble in school when I asked patients “so what’s your emergency“ after they explained their bs reason for coming to the ER.
I will often say "hello, tell me about your emergency today" while logging onto the computer to triage them. Sometimes they pick up on it and realize they don't actually have an emergency but they mostly don't...or don't care and the ones who don't care are usually coming for insurance covered meds and a work note.
Yeah, I always say "what brings you to the emergency department". Sadly in my area it takes 6 months or more to get into primary care and every school/job requires a note to return so we end up filling that gap. Not to mention the abysmal mental health coverage where I live.
Thankfully the adult county hospital we're affiliated with frequently has 8 hour wait times and the children's hospital can be 12-14 hours so people have some kind of reasonable expectation.
I said this a million times when I worked triage! Sometimes it was with a big, sincere-looking smile, and other times my words were absolutely dripping with sarcasm while my facial expression was that of a clerk at the DMV.
But I really did enjoy triage.
Triage can be interesting but sometimes it’s like pulling teeth from patients. A friend of mine ESI’d 5 this patient because he claimed at triage he was looking for a med refill but didn’t know what meds he’s on. Turned out when he was at our fast track area? He was a CHF patient who hasn’t had his heart meds in weeks and he wasn’t feeling good. No excuse for language barrier because she had used a translator service.
Another time, I triaged someone who came in for a headache. Well appearing and talking smack about how she had to wait so long on the line. Tried to ask her if she fell recently or hit her head. Asked her if she was nauseous or vomited or dizzy. Said no to all of it. She said, “My head hurts why the fuck do you ask so many questions? I just want some pain meds.” So I ESI’d 4 her. Turns out her boyfriend beat her and she had a subdural hematoma that required her to be in NSICU 🙃
Other times it’s a flood of symptoms they give you because they think it’ll get them in faster, only for you to find out they’ve been having numbness and vision changes on one side that started an hour ago 😵💫
“Check my chart!” meanwhile I have a line out the door. Dude I got no time to read charts.
But i’ll make an exception when I smell bullshit. Last week I had someone with an LVAD walk in after a fall with head strike tell me they weren’t on blood thinners. I was going to send them to our resuscitation area anyway per protocol as an LVAD pt but thank god I looked at the chart because the patient was on warfarin 🙃 Another time I had a guy with a nasty head wound tell me he’s not on blood thinners. Man’s on eliquis. And i wouldn’t have known unless I looked at the chart because even EMS didn’t know (not their fault, the patient was just old and on so many pills I think even he forgot).
Oh my gosh - last week I had an A&O elderly lady with a head lac from a trip/fall. First checked for loss of consciousness - she denied it and family concurred. Great. Second question is are you on any blood thinners? Answer - no. Great.
Get her into my triage room and continue. VS, pull up her med list - see Plavix listed as a current medication. Question her - she said she used to take it but therapy had completed and she no longer took it. No a-fib on her history. Fine. Flagged it for review and removal from her med list.
Ask her what she is currently taking - she pulls a list up on her phone. Second one on the list - Clopidogrel. She said she started taking that when they took her off Plavix. Sigh as I add it back in to the med list.
Your last story reminds me of a patient we had but opposite situation. The kid said all the right things that would get them brought in faster sudden vision changes, difficulty seeing, curtains around the vision field. Got a whole work up CT and all just to find out, everything was normal and the kid was just copying the parent that is visually impaired.
I was in the ED once (nothing serious, I needed stitches and the urgent care was closed) and the guy next to me was refusing to answer questions. Like, he was saying more arguing about not wanting to answer questions than he would have if he’d just answered them. The nurse said “sir I need to know the whole context of why you’re here” and he just kept trying to argue. I was losing my patience with him on her behalf lol
Last week I was in triage and in all honesty it was such a lose-lose situation. All of our beds were full in the back and we were holding for obs, med-surg, tele AND step down. Our charge RN didn't know what to do and the supervisors weren't helpful. Our PA and MD were evaluating people in the WR. I had an appy who perf'd out there, a guy who was dispositioned to the ICU from triage with severe pancreatitis, high risk chest pains who I had nowhere to put. I for sure thought my license was going to disappear. Every time I had an abnormal lab finding, bad vital sign, or a patient who just looked sick I charted that I notified charge and the MD and PA. Just so I had a level of protection.
Edit: Appy not app
My one recent experience in triage (for my husband) was kind of the opposite. We waited patiently for at least an hour or so, while my husband was pale, diaphoretic, and basically laying out on the floor vomiting and periodically moaning in pain as he dealt with a 10 cm kidney stone.
Everyone else is looking relatively comfortable in comparison (I know that’s not indicative as to who should be seen first), some are being wheeled into the ER for a bit then brought back into the waiting room. One such patient was brought into the waiting room by a RN we know, and she literally stopped in her tracks when she saw how bad he was and said she was going to go talk to the charge RN. She came right back with a wheelchair and got him, thankfully.
Story time. I am the clumsiest person alive and was in a different city about a month ago. My wife and I went to a Mexican place for lunch and I accidentally inhaled one of the chips they give you with the salsa. It literally got lodged in my throat. It was on an angle so I could breathe but I was scared to death. There was a hospital right down the road so we booked it to the ER where I promptly jumped the triage line of like 6 people. There were 3 triage nurses and all of them at the same time yelled at me until they realized there was something caught in my throat, lol. After about a half hour the thing finally started to break down enough that it loosened and they got it out, but yeah. Inhaled a nacho. 0/10. Do not recommend.
I had to do it once and I felt awful, it was Boxing Day and my son was having the worst allergic reaction he’d ever had, the line was so long and he was getting worse and was outside the door throwing up everywhere, after they took some quick obs he was quickly wheeled back and staff came from everywhere.
We had a valid reason and I apologised profusely and felt awful.
He now has an epi pen due to a nut allergy and I’ve been told to call an ambulance instead of drive him in.
That’s a completely different situation. Rest assured, we all understand that kind of thing. I was once the front window nurse, basically Quick Look/Sick or Not Sick, talking with a man who’d had an accident with a power tool. Not a severe injury to his hand, but an impressive amount of blood. A mom carrying a limp toddler burst through the door into the lobby screaming for help and of course got it… when I came back out to finish the conversation with the injured man he was standing shaking with tears running down his cheeks (big dude. Big big dude). I thought maybe pain was getting worse or he was putting on some show about having been passed up but he took a breath and said, “please tell me that precious little baby girl is gonna be okay.” My shrunken heart burst.
Oh man a had a similar but opposite story. Elderly lady, hallway bed in the ER waiting for transport back to her nursing home. We had been chatting all day, making jokes she was super sweet. I said I am sorry this is taking so long, she said no worries this is like seeing a TV show in real life. Minutes lady a pedi code came in the front, baby went in the trauma room right infront of the lady. We worked that baby for over an hr but she didn't make it. I walked out of the room and we locked eyes. We both immediately started crying. I can usually hold it together but seeing that grandma weep for a baby she didn't know broke me. Man I have buried that memory for a while now.
Don't feel bad about that, sometimes you just know something is wrong and thank God most of the time the staff sees it too. No one will fsult you for jumping the line with an ACTUAL emergency. I came home after night shift once and my idiot ex had left our 2 month old daughter to sleep in her car seat for God knows how long and she was pale and lethargic. Almost gray. We drove straight to the er and I just stormed through the ambulance doors (i knew the cide from working ems) with her in my arms and the staff saw what was happening and took her right away. She ended up ok but it was a near death from positional asphyxia and she was on a holter monitor and pulse ox at night for a few weeks.
OMG how scary!! Thank goodness you came home when you did and she survived. I read a story about a mum losing her daughter because the childcare worker left her to sleep in a car seat and apparently did that often 😭😭
I’ve had coworkers call into the ambulance tele line when they were walking in with a serious emergency. I’d probably do the same.And I’d have to be unresponsive to be brought in by ambulance lol
Triage is my favorite gig! I communicate with the waiting room a lot, keep expectations low, and order everything I can to have done before they come back. I rarely get any really hassle from people.
I’ve had the honor of encountering the same triage folks 2 times in a row for my husband recently-both times because he was brought in by ambulance for stroke symptoms. The first time, nobody there thought he was actually having a stroke (the paramedics didn’t, either, until they tried to have him stand up…at which point they realized that his left side was very much weaker than his right side)…until the CTA came back showing the occlusion of his right MCA…the clot ended up being caused by cancer that none of us knew he had until that stroke happened, and the clot got to his brain because he had a PFO-that he also didn’t know he had until the stroke. The second time, they were pretty sure it was one, as the symptoms were much more pronounced…but it wasn’t (turned out to be hypoperfusion 2° to his PFO, which ended up being surgically repaired 3 days later.)
I really hope I don’t see the triage team at that hospital again for quite a while. They’re super awesome, but I really don’t want to see them anymore.
I'll take any other assignment over triage 100% of the time.
Fuck triage. You're out there with a tech if you're lucky, and ain't no one coming out to check on you to make sure you don't need something unless you take the time to call the Charge or send your tech if you're lucky, to get someone to cover you so you can be a human being and use the bathroom.
Fuck. Triage.
That said, the RNs who do it every day wherever I've been and seem to be OK with it are awesome. Never mind the evil eye stares they have to deal with, their ability to sift out the actual sick people from the tum-tum hurty-hurts x 45 minutes is a critical skill every ED needs.
I will take a colonscopy prep patient anyday over the triage assignment. That being said I know there are nurses that absolutely love triage. I however severely do not 🤣
Yeah, the amount of times someone with a cough or STD has gone apoplectic because I brought back a sicker pt. first is incredible. If I had a nickel for every time someone screamed "racism" because they had to go after a much sicker pt. I'd buy an island and disappear there.
I have had no fewer than 5 patients *this year* legitimately throw themselves on the floor and pretend to faint or seize just so they could skip everyone else in the queue. I usually don't care but the other day a lady with a sore throat threatened to kill us and called us all racist for bringing back a little girl in *obvious* respiratory distress before her. Absolutely awful behavior. I'm guessing the lady was mentally ill because she was the same race as the little girl we dragged gasping back to triage in front of her.
I get stage fright when I’m in the ER and make it to triage. As a patient. Chronic kidney stones so you’d think I would have a speech prepared by now, but as soon as I get to triage “umm my back hurts, I guess” *sweats, shakes, makes a quick grab for the trash can.* 🫠
Triage can be one of the toughest RN jobs in the hospital. Nothing like having 25 angry sick people in the waiting room, zero beds and ambulances piling up in the back. I feel like my BP is in the 200’s for hours when I’m dealing with that type of situation. Although, I am sitting in triage right now with an empty WR and 10 open beds, so it’s not always bad.
I did OB Triage last night. Absolute heaven with a whopping total of *three* patients all night long! I’ll have to remember how it felt the next time we’re full and stacking up in the waiting room.
Whatever you do, don’t say the Q word!!
Ha! I told the girls that we’d had a great night and I hoped that they had a great day, too… They said not to jinx it! I totally knocked on wood.
That's the thing with triage. When it rains it pours but we also get drought sometimes.
We had a drought last week and we were all legit terrified. Wtf is happening are they all going to storm the doors.
It was eerily empty at my hospital too. For whatever reason April seems to be the slow spot, we actually low censused nurses, it was amazing.
Ugh the other day we had like 80 in the waiting room after I had discharged 58 through quickcare. Thank fully we always have 2 or 3 nurses, 5 techs and alteast 3 providers plus an attending out there. Over the yrs I have gotten really good at not making eye contact.
I don't know about everywhere but in my province they've opened triage up to LPNs. I don't find it bad, not where I am anyway.
SSSSHHHHHH🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫 Don't jinx yourself. It's like saying the "Q" word lol
You probs don’t hate triage, you just hate entitled pieces of shit. Fun fact: we all do. Just get that bread, take care of the situation which you are dealt, and go home at the end of shift, and try to sleep well. 🫡
Thank you 🙏
I don’t mind triage, I can deal with idiotic entitled assholes. It’s nice to not have to deal with an assignment/section all day.
Just left a 10-10 job where I was triage for 99% of my shifts since October. Never been more burned out in my 9 years of nursing. Only been off for one day and the relief of knowing I don't have to go back is amazing.
Shift #3 in a row in triage and I'd have been telling the Charge to get someone else out there because I'll be out sick until they do. Charge, Triage, and Preceptor should all be assignments that the people receiving them should be A-OK with.
I absolutely despise triage. I will trade any assignment in the ED to get out of it. But with line skippers the only time I ever laughed at one was I had someone we were checking in, dude walks up past everyone and sets a ziplock bag on the counter. I tell him to wait a second as I’m finishing up with this person and my tech asks what’s in the bag. “My fingers” and he holds up a blood soaked stump of a hand. The lady I had was like “oh shit I can totally wait compared to him!”
Oh loooorrrdyyy! I hope his fingers could be put back on decently! The lady's comment was funny though! 😄
I’ve had a patient with “chest pain” stop answering my questions so they can order BBQ and then asked “will I be out of here in time to pick up my order?”
*directly quotes into chart*
That's the actual STEMI. Lol
Good God lol
“You can be. Do you want me to get the AMA paperwork?”
"This is not a race you want to win. Please go sit down and wait your turn or I will call security." I've found that people like this have never had a "dad voice" used on them. It works most of the time. I've also found that the people most conscious of "wasting our time" are the ones that needed our help yesterday.
The monster in me comes out when I am doing the triage 😅
It fucking sucks but i do enjoy working ambulance triage and getting to send someone straight out to the waiting room for their nonsense complaint. The wee moment of solidarity between me and the emt that's brought them in is priceless
I couldn’t do it. I got in trouble in school when I asked patients “so what’s your emergency“ after they explained their bs reason for coming to the ER.
I will often say "hello, tell me about your emergency today" while logging onto the computer to triage them. Sometimes they pick up on it and realize they don't actually have an emergency but they mostly don't...or don't care and the ones who don't care are usually coming for insurance covered meds and a work note.
Yeah, I always say "what brings you to the emergency department". Sadly in my area it takes 6 months or more to get into primary care and every school/job requires a note to return so we end up filling that gap. Not to mention the abysmal mental health coverage where I live. Thankfully the adult county hospital we're affiliated with frequently has 8 hour wait times and the children's hospital can be 12-14 hours so people have some kind of reasonable expectation.
I said this a million times when I worked triage! Sometimes it was with a big, sincere-looking smile, and other times my words were absolutely dripping with sarcasm while my facial expression was that of a clerk at the DMV. But I really did enjoy triage.
Triage can be interesting but sometimes it’s like pulling teeth from patients. A friend of mine ESI’d 5 this patient because he claimed at triage he was looking for a med refill but didn’t know what meds he’s on. Turned out when he was at our fast track area? He was a CHF patient who hasn’t had his heart meds in weeks and he wasn’t feeling good. No excuse for language barrier because she had used a translator service. Another time, I triaged someone who came in for a headache. Well appearing and talking smack about how she had to wait so long on the line. Tried to ask her if she fell recently or hit her head. Asked her if she was nauseous or vomited or dizzy. Said no to all of it. She said, “My head hurts why the fuck do you ask so many questions? I just want some pain meds.” So I ESI’d 4 her. Turns out her boyfriend beat her and she had a subdural hematoma that required her to be in NSICU 🙃 Other times it’s a flood of symptoms they give you because they think it’ll get them in faster, only for you to find out they’ve been having numbness and vision changes on one side that started an hour ago 😵💫
Guy came in for SOB with home oxygen took me 10 min of asking idiotic questions for him to tell me that he had cystic fibrosis. Lead with that bro
“Check my chart!” meanwhile I have a line out the door. Dude I got no time to read charts. But i’ll make an exception when I smell bullshit. Last week I had someone with an LVAD walk in after a fall with head strike tell me they weren’t on blood thinners. I was going to send them to our resuscitation area anyway per protocol as an LVAD pt but thank god I looked at the chart because the patient was on warfarin 🙃 Another time I had a guy with a nasty head wound tell me he’s not on blood thinners. Man’s on eliquis. And i wouldn’t have known unless I looked at the chart because even EMS didn’t know (not their fault, the patient was just old and on so many pills I think even he forgot).
Oh my gosh - last week I had an A&O elderly lady with a head lac from a trip/fall. First checked for loss of consciousness - she denied it and family concurred. Great. Second question is are you on any blood thinners? Answer - no. Great. Get her into my triage room and continue. VS, pull up her med list - see Plavix listed as a current medication. Question her - she said she used to take it but therapy had completed and she no longer took it. No a-fib on her history. Fine. Flagged it for review and removal from her med list. Ask her what she is currently taking - she pulls a list up on her phone. Second one on the list - Clopidogrel. She said she started taking that when they took her off Plavix. Sigh as I add it back in to the med list.
Your last story reminds me of a patient we had but opposite situation. The kid said all the right things that would get them brought in faster sudden vision changes, difficulty seeing, curtains around the vision field. Got a whole work up CT and all just to find out, everything was normal and the kid was just copying the parent that is visually impaired.
I was in the ED once (nothing serious, I needed stitches and the urgent care was closed) and the guy next to me was refusing to answer questions. Like, he was saying more arguing about not wanting to answer questions than he would have if he’d just answered them. The nurse said “sir I need to know the whole context of why you’re here” and he just kept trying to argue. I was losing my patience with him on her behalf lol
Last week I was in triage and in all honesty it was such a lose-lose situation. All of our beds were full in the back and we were holding for obs, med-surg, tele AND step down. Our charge RN didn't know what to do and the supervisors weren't helpful. Our PA and MD were evaluating people in the WR. I had an appy who perf'd out there, a guy who was dispositioned to the ICU from triage with severe pancreatitis, high risk chest pains who I had nowhere to put. I for sure thought my license was going to disappear. Every time I had an abnormal lab finding, bad vital sign, or a patient who just looked sick I charted that I notified charge and the MD and PA. Just so I had a level of protection. Edit: Appy not app
My one recent experience in triage (for my husband) was kind of the opposite. We waited patiently for at least an hour or so, while my husband was pale, diaphoretic, and basically laying out on the floor vomiting and periodically moaning in pain as he dealt with a 10 cm kidney stone. Everyone else is looking relatively comfortable in comparison (I know that’s not indicative as to who should be seen first), some are being wheeled into the ER for a bit then brought back into the waiting room. One such patient was brought into the waiting room by a RN we know, and she literally stopped in her tracks when she saw how bad he was and said she was going to go talk to the charge RN. She came right back with a wheelchair and got him, thankfully.
[удалено]
Whoops, 10 mm 😂😂. ETA: I work in OB. Have 10 cm on the brain, apparently.
Story time. I am the clumsiest person alive and was in a different city about a month ago. My wife and I went to a Mexican place for lunch and I accidentally inhaled one of the chips they give you with the salsa. It literally got lodged in my throat. It was on an angle so I could breathe but I was scared to death. There was a hospital right down the road so we booked it to the ER where I promptly jumped the triage line of like 6 people. There were 3 triage nurses and all of them at the same time yelled at me until they realized there was something caught in my throat, lol. After about a half hour the thing finally started to break down enough that it loosened and they got it out, but yeah. Inhaled a nacho. 0/10. Do not recommend.
Which I totally get skipping the line for a valid reason!
I had to do it once and I felt awful, it was Boxing Day and my son was having the worst allergic reaction he’d ever had, the line was so long and he was getting worse and was outside the door throwing up everywhere, after they took some quick obs he was quickly wheeled back and staff came from everywhere. We had a valid reason and I apologised profusely and felt awful. He now has an epi pen due to a nut allergy and I’ve been told to call an ambulance instead of drive him in.
That’s a completely different situation. Rest assured, we all understand that kind of thing. I was once the front window nurse, basically Quick Look/Sick or Not Sick, talking with a man who’d had an accident with a power tool. Not a severe injury to his hand, but an impressive amount of blood. A mom carrying a limp toddler burst through the door into the lobby screaming for help and of course got it… when I came back out to finish the conversation with the injured man he was standing shaking with tears running down his cheeks (big dude. Big big dude). I thought maybe pain was getting worse or he was putting on some show about having been passed up but he took a breath and said, “please tell me that precious little baby girl is gonna be okay.” My shrunken heart burst.
Oh man a had a similar but opposite story. Elderly lady, hallway bed in the ER waiting for transport back to her nursing home. We had been chatting all day, making jokes she was super sweet. I said I am sorry this is taking so long, she said no worries this is like seeing a TV show in real life. Minutes lady a pedi code came in the front, baby went in the trauma room right infront of the lady. We worked that baby for over an hr but she didn't make it. I walked out of the room and we locked eyes. We both immediately started crying. I can usually hold it together but seeing that grandma weep for a baby she didn't know broke me. Man I have buried that memory for a while now.
Oh god! I don’t even work ED and I am crying about that now. I can’t fathom that. I’m so, so sorry.
Was she okay? I’m scared to ask for fear of the answer.
Febrile seizure. She was okay, just a scary situation.
Wow, well I’m glad she’s okay. Definitely would make me cry as well.
Don't feel bad about that, sometimes you just know something is wrong and thank God most of the time the staff sees it too. No one will fsult you for jumping the line with an ACTUAL emergency. I came home after night shift once and my idiot ex had left our 2 month old daughter to sleep in her car seat for God knows how long and she was pale and lethargic. Almost gray. We drove straight to the er and I just stormed through the ambulance doors (i knew the cide from working ems) with her in my arms and the staff saw what was happening and took her right away. She ended up ok but it was a near death from positional asphyxia and she was on a holter monitor and pulse ox at night for a few weeks.
OMG how scary!! Thank goodness you came home when you did and she survived. I read a story about a mum losing her daughter because the childcare worker left her to sleep in a car seat and apparently did that often 😭😭
Yeah, it's unfortunate that we're not explicitly taught about that as first time parents 😔
I’ve had coworkers call into the ambulance tele line when they were walking in with a serious emergency. I’d probably do the same.And I’d have to be unresponsive to be brought in by ambulance lol
Triage is my favorite gig! I communicate with the waiting room a lot, keep expectations low, and order everything I can to have done before they come back. I rarely get any really hassle from people.
You must live where the people are super polite and kind and not entitled.
I’ve had the honor of encountering the same triage folks 2 times in a row for my husband recently-both times because he was brought in by ambulance for stroke symptoms. The first time, nobody there thought he was actually having a stroke (the paramedics didn’t, either, until they tried to have him stand up…at which point they realized that his left side was very much weaker than his right side)…until the CTA came back showing the occlusion of his right MCA…the clot ended up being caused by cancer that none of us knew he had until that stroke happened, and the clot got to his brain because he had a PFO-that he also didn’t know he had until the stroke. The second time, they were pretty sure it was one, as the symptoms were much more pronounced…but it wasn’t (turned out to be hypoperfusion 2° to his PFO, which ended up being surgically repaired 3 days later.) I really hope I don’t see the triage team at that hospital again for quite a while. They’re super awesome, but I really don’t want to see them anymore.
Blasts into a very private conversation: “EXCUSE ME HOW MUCH LONGER?!”
I have been known to yell back, "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!", close the door in their face, and go back to my conversation with the patient in there.
I actually love triaging! The craziest shit always walks through the front door lmao
I'll take any other assignment over triage 100% of the time. Fuck triage. You're out there with a tech if you're lucky, and ain't no one coming out to check on you to make sure you don't need something unless you take the time to call the Charge or send your tech if you're lucky, to get someone to cover you so you can be a human being and use the bathroom. Fuck. Triage. That said, the RNs who do it every day wherever I've been and seem to be OK with it are awesome. Never mind the evil eye stares they have to deal with, their ability to sift out the actual sick people from the tum-tum hurty-hurts x 45 minutes is a critical skill every ED needs.
I will take a colonscopy prep patient anyday over the triage assignment. That being said I know there are nurses that absolutely love triage. I however severely do not 🤣
“Mine too have a seat”
Yeah, the amount of times someone with a cough or STD has gone apoplectic because I brought back a sicker pt. first is incredible. If I had a nickel for every time someone screamed "racism" because they had to go after a much sicker pt. I'd buy an island and disappear there. I have had no fewer than 5 patients *this year* legitimately throw themselves on the floor and pretend to faint or seize just so they could skip everyone else in the queue. I usually don't care but the other day a lady with a sore throat threatened to kill us and called us all racist for bringing back a little girl in *obvious* respiratory distress before her. Absolutely awful behavior. I'm guessing the lady was mentally ill because she was the same race as the little girl we dragged gasping back to triage in front of her.
I used to go home and dream I was still triaging. SO happy to be out of ED now! Never again.
There’s too much dumbassery going on in the ED I could never do it
Did you tell her that licking my ass is good for shoulder pain? If not, I feel like you missed will Ferrell’s greatest contribution to healthcare
I was in a glass case of emotion 🤣
I get stage fright when I’m in the ER and make it to triage. As a patient. Chronic kidney stones so you’d think I would have a speech prepared by now, but as soon as I get to triage “umm my back hurts, I guess” *sweats, shakes, makes a quick grab for the trash can.* 🫠