#needaraise

Recently I have been working to balance my money situation through all the competing pressures that I experience financially, some external and some that I put upon myself. I've been working for a demanding nonprofit for over a year, making $55,550 a year gross. Given all the work I do for them and the millions of dollars I've brought in as a fundraiser, I would appreciate a raise, and asked my boss for one at my annual review last year, but he declined to give it to me, stating that since I had already negotiated a higher salary to begin with, I'd have to stick to what I had. As I recently gave up a huge source of security, living with a partner in his co-op apartment and paying $100-200 in rent per month for five years, my money situation has been somewhat strained. I had to move to a new place (sublet) January 1, which involves $945 in rent a month and a $472 deposit. Therefore money has been tight for me. I'm very much looking forward to my tax return, which will help me out. However, I am planning an overseas trip for the next month, so some of the tax return will go towards this trip. My father has admonished me for traveling when he says I should be saving, and paying off my giant student loan debt. But I find that without travel, which I also love just for its own sake, I don't have psychological and physical release from my problems here in New York. 

It’s obvious to everyone that nurses are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid. But ER nurses have it worse. Here are the 17 reasons why ER nurses should get paid more.

1. We are the hospitals first responders (not including EMS). This means hours of hazmat, disaster, and Ebola training in that hazmat suit that I call a Dutch oven. Tips for you future ER nurses, no bean burritos before hazmat class. No bueno.

2. What’s phlebotomy? Yeah we don’t have that luxury.

3. I might start putting Hospital Transporter on my resume. Yeah, we transport our own pt’s and pray that the other 8 we left wont code on us.

4. House keeping, house keeping, house keeping, I have my bachelor’s degree (with honors i might add) and were talking about house keeping (this is an Alan Iverson reference). The ED can’t always wait for housekeeping to clean the rooms so we do it.

5. We are the IV start team. EJs and ultrasound guided IVs, yeah we do them. NBD. In smaller hospitals we get called to start IVs on the floor when the floor nurses can’t. We don’t use a vein finding machine; we are walking, talking, vein finding, IV inserting machines.

6. Things you’ll never hear an ER nurse say “My pt’s getting sicker I think I’ll call another nurse to take care of them, because I can’t”. Or how about this one “Call the Rapid Response Team!” “Call a Code Blue!”. We are the rapid response team, we run our own codes, we don’t panic. We are ER nurses, we are badasses.

7. BLS, CPI, ACLS, PALS, TNCC, ENPC, Burn Certified, NIH Stroke Certified, CEN… It’s like getting another degree every 2-4 years.

8. Floor nurses get RN-RN report and they can also read all of the health care notes. ER nurses get pts long drawn out story that makes no sense whatsoever, with a garbage bag full of meds to chart.

9. Dear floor nurses, have you ever had pt’s in the hallway because you don’t have enough rooms? Oh no? Sounds like an ER nurses wet dream.

10. We work with every pompous jack ass medical school can produce. we work with every single cocky interdisciplinary teams ever created. Floor nurses only work with a few that are specific to their unit. You guys have real relationships, we’re just used and abused.

11. There is no such thing as a limit on pt/nurse ratio for ER nurses (at least in Michigan). Sound safe? I mean I like living dangerously. Are we putting our license on the line, more so then floor nurses?

12. We have forgotten what techs (pca, cna, nurses aid) looks like. They’re far and few between. Please hire more of them! They are not just ancillary staff.

13. Don’t get me started on core measures. Most of them initiated by ER Nurses, and they’re timed. Bad flashbacks to timed tests in college just happened.

14. Do you know what pepper spray tastes like? We see a higher % of combative pts then floor nurses. I mean has your floor ever run out of leather restraints? It gets pretty kinky in the ER.

15. If we have “hold pt’s” that means we are the floor and we are also doing your job, which means we are also ICU, SICU, MedSurg, and Peds nurses. However, unlike the ICU we don’t have a limit on how many ICU pt’s we can get. I need a moment of silence for a part of me that died just talking about it.

16. You will never have to answer an EMS call. Their network is not LTE clear.

17. We take care of drunk people. We are going to heaven.

Yes? No? Maybe? Don’t take this too seriously though, unless you’re going to give me a raise!