💟Why I loved triage nursing

I worked as an emergency room nurse for over 14 years before I retired in 2019 and I spent a large majority of the last 7 years or so of my career mainly doing triage. When I worked in the ER, sometimes I would be assigned a room assignment, meaning 4 patients, or to be float nurse, to help everyone, or triage or 2nd triage(which is the one who would get vitals or ekg's). When we were short staffed or after 12am there was just 1 triage nurse. I was even at one point relief charge (which I hated)😡😂 definitely not my thing, so I avoided that like the plague lol. Triage was my strong suit though because my personality fit there, I was able to control the waiting room no matter the chaos & help regulate the flow of patients to my team in the back.

The biggest thing I feel that served me well, especially because I worked nights was my attitude, I had an aggressive attitude when needed & was not intimidated by yelling pts or family members & in fact would yell at them if need be, this kept people from getting out of hand & worked in my favor. I also could decipher between a loud mouth & a sick pt cause the loudest isn’t always the sickest! Being sick is awful, having family sick is worse but acting a fool is never acceptable & its not gonna help the pt for you to act that way in the ER. I’m a huge pt advocate & believe me if a pt is truly sick & has something serious going on that needs immediate attention, I’m the First one to act!!

I remember a woman came up front to the hospital when we were remodeling & I saw commotion outside the lobby door, I went out & its a child on the ground in a diaper, another nurse from the hospital is checking him, I say what happened, mom says he was in the pool when she found him & pulled him out, unknown time, I yell to my team call code white (kid down outside), but I pick him up with help, he’s 2y & kinda big, breathing but gurgling, I decide, screw this, LETS RUN, so me & mom run to the ER in the back of hospital cause I didn't like the way this baby looked😳. I get almost to door, the ER doc meets me in hall we stop I tell her story. Hand off kid to our emt cause I’m out of gas now 🤪 and we go to room and start code, the kid had poopy diaper too, so I had to get new scrubs from housekeeping cause I could smell it on me 🤢 but hey at the time, all I could think was get that kid to the doctor👍. Because it was a near drowning, police had to be called & they came & child was admitted in critical condition. You never know whats gonna walk into triage or show up in front of triage.🤷‍♀️

Always scary with kids involved, and there’s no script, sometimes you just react. I had a kid who had a panic attack come in screaming at the top of her lungs “I can’t breathe" and the parents in full melt down too, they almost couldn't handle that I was totally ignoring them, I bent down & looked at the child took her hands & said calmly listen to me, do what I do, copy me, etc, and in a minute or 2 she was taking slow breaths and calm, then we got her vitals. Ironically, I have a great way with kids, they always respond to me, I often had just a lil purple in my hair, maybe that helped 😉.

Then there is the drama 🙄 I called a male pt in his 20's and he walks to the triage door with his girlfriend & falls down right in front of the door & she starts screaming at me, “do something” so I said “get up you were just fine & you were just walking, now do you wanna be seen or not, stop playing with me boy and get in this chair" she says “you're mean what kind of nurse are you?” As he gets up and gets in the chair. I said “one that knows my job now have a seat, I’ll bring you in when he’s in a bed, I don’t need you in here for this.” I had no problem putting my foot down when it's needed, cause too many people just wanted to act a fool in the ER & that was My house & I was running it😎 if you were sick I got you but don’t play no games with me.

We didn’t get a whole bunch but whenever a child abuse case came in, that was a 1 to 1 case just cause of the documenting that needs to be done & all the phone calls & time & because I had done it & was comfortable with it the charge nurse usually put me on those when they came in, it also kept the pt from having to repeat it to multiple people because I usually was the one triaging them, but even if I didn’t they would give it to me once the complaint was known. Those are tough cases, my hospital was not one that did the whole exam so we kept them there for the police to interview and did the child protective service report then the police would pick them up & take them to the SART(sexual assault response team) hospital and they do the exam there. People don’t realize its only certain hospitals that do those exams, but yeah its true. It’s easy when the person bringing the child in is not the person suspected, but if the Dr or nurse suspects them & has to make the call, that’s a whole different story.

Only once did I have to do distraction techniques until the police arrived with a family because they were going to remove the kids right there in the dept. It was stressful but clearly needed, a broken bone that was obvious abuse on a 7 yr old, & there were 3 other kids with them there but 3 other kids at the house so they coordinated grabbing all the kids at once. This was evidently not first event or complaint. Never forget that. Nursing is rewarding but you see the worst & best of people, you get to help & hurt people for ultimately good reasons but if you choose it for the right reason, you will never regret it. I had to retire because of my heart & not being able to physically work but I am still a nurse & will always be. I keep my RN license current & active & read journals & latest info, because I worked so hard to obtain my license and I don’t intend to let it expire even if I can’t work again. I am very proud to be a Registered Nurse. 🙂👌