About Emergency Room Nurses
Emergency room nurses, or ER nurses for short, have to go through a lot of training to get to that position. Their training is meant to prepare them for the fast-paced environments of an emergency room, and the last minute judgment calls required of the vocation.
ER nurses are given several tasks and duties to perform on patients who have been brought into the emergency room. They often have to perform triage duties, check patient's vitals, temperature and are in charge of a patient's aftercare until the patient is either released or moved to a hospital room.
- Triage work might just be hardest part of an ER nurse's duties. If the patient is brought into the emergency room in critical condition, the ER nurse cannot waste time while assessing the patient and getting him into the doctor's care. Critical patients really do boil down to life and death situations in an ER.
Education is a huge part of becoming an ER nurse. These nurses are registered nurses with a bachelor or associate degree. In addition, many emergency room nurses also have years of experience to go hand-in-hand with their degree, again, because it is critical that they think on the fly and assess patient's needs quickly and accurately.
ER nurses who met these qualifications typically earned a median yearly salary of $62,450 in May 2008, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Depending on where the ER nurse lives and years of experience, salaries can range from a low as $43,410, to as high as $92,240.