Registered Nurse, Aurora

>> So my name is Erica. I am a nurse at Aurora Sinai emergency department. So shift in an emergency department it can vary. You can have patients who come in with a minor sore throat or a possible broken arm. To anything from a gunshot wound to a stabbing. So as a nurse we are one of the first people that actually sees the patient. We come in to the room; we assess the patient, looking at their vital signs, looking at their cognitive ability. Are they unconscious, are they talking to us? Aurora Sinai's one of the highest stroke hospitals in Wisconsin, so we're always getting stroke victims or potential stroke victims. So we look at the patient, look at their status, see what needs to be done next. If labs need to be ordered, collaborating with doctors, as well as giving some medications. At my job I have the availability to work either an eight hour shift, a 10 hour shift or a 12 hour shift. I have the flexibility to base it off of my own schedule. So if I am working a typical eight hour shift, I would go in, I would clock in. I would get report from the fellow nurse, if there was any patients that were stilled in green in the rooms. I would go in, meet the patient, read a little bit about why they are here. Then collaborate with the doctors as what the next step would be. As those patients either get discharged from the hospital or get admitted to a floor upstairs we'll transfer them. And then within 15 minutes they can flip over the room and have a new patient in there. So on a normal shift I can see things such as a broken arm to a sore throat to dehydration, especially in the summer here. I can definitely see a lot of potential strokes. We don't get a lot of victims such as gunshot wounds or stabbings, but if something comes to our door, we will assess them. Make them stable, then we'll send them off to another hospital. So I work second shift. So it's a standard second shift is 3pm to 11pm, but I like to do the 10's. So 3pm to 1am.