ER Tech.

I have some friends that do this.

It's great experience in how an ER/medicine works. You do a bunch of not so imporant jobs but get to assist in some stuff. You can learn a lot if you try. If you're an EMT (which is min required in some places), it's going to take some getting used to not being the leader and instead being a team player.

 

Why not ask your friend's mom about the position? It has different responsabilities in different hospitals.

 

Im an ER patient care associate, which is like an ER tech. I get to do some cool stuff and some arbitrary tasks. If it is a big ER like mine, you get tons of patient contact and see some crazy traumas.

 

Let's see: change bed linens, check. stock trauma bays, check. charge portable EKG batteries, check. take vital signs, check. draw blood for labs, check. mop up vomit, check. scribe during trauma, check. stock crash cart, check. transport patient to cath lab, check.

At least that's how it works here. You get lots of patient contact, but you're the nurse's little helper. You don't use any of your EMT skills (EMT-B is required to be an ER tech here). Some docs and nurses will teach you things as the day goes by, others just expect you to do all the things they don't want to.

If you need exposure and patient contact time, it's a good enough way to go.

 

That varies. As mentioned above, some places require an EMT-B certification.

Otherwise, I imagine you probably need to be CPR/AED certified at the Health Care Provider level.

 

Some of the more involved things i get to do is perform EKGs, CPR, help in activated and non-activated traumas (i.e. cut off clothes, chack vitals, place leads, EKGs, glucometer), transport patients, run the emergency psych ward (literally, run it, only me and another PCA in there. have to call for nurses to administer drugs, etc)

 

Well first off, you should ask your friends mom about the details of the position so you can be clear about what they do in that particular ER. In our ER, we (ER techs) draw blood, perform CPR, do EKG's, and yes sometimes we have to clean the patients bottom if no one else is available. We also transport patients to Ultrasound and CT if the transporters are busy and we go with the nurses to transport them to the floors because we have BLS(basic life support) certification. I have seen so many different victims and ill people that I am numb to it all, but when I first started I was really nervous. I believe that seeing all those people die kind of coated me with more tough skin than I originally had. I remember when I was doing compressions on this older patient and cracked ribs I was just out done, but it was my first set and they all congratulated me . You get to see all kinds of cool stuff and some not so cool stuff. If you are a talker you can even ask the Doc's ????? if you are curious about things, that's how I learned so many different things.
As for the official training, I have been a medical assistant for 7 years and the program I attended for this diploma was only 6 months with a 1 month externship (160 hrs hands on). I don't regret one minute of taking the course because I have gotten soooo much patient contact that it's rediculous, so it's a great opportunity to look into. Good Luck!!

 

Where I worked as an ER tech, we weren't ALLOWED to clean up like that Union rules for the janitors or something like that. Sounds stupid, but "oh, no, don't stop me from cleaning the puke!!"

The docs were very cool, when they heard I was going to go to med school they had me doing all kinds of cool stuff with them. Definately apply for the job if it fits your schedule!

 

meanwhile, a friend of mine gets to do everything the nurses do except push meds (and even then, some of the nurses let her do that as well). She'll even put in orders for tests that she knows the doctors will request, and they just sign the order. So, depending on where you go, you'll have varying levels of responsibility. If one of the above doesn't sound like your cup of tea (maybe you don't want a lot of responsibility!), then make sure you find out what the job offering is. And you might have to be an EMT/CNA to get it anyways.

 

around here, you need a fair amount of experience to get one of those jobs - the ER techs I know had 2+ years of experience as a CNA or EMT, or they were a paramedic.

 

I'm an ED tech.

I do an outrageous amount of EKG's throughout the day, draw quite a few labs, insert a few foley's, answer every damn call-light I get to, and I have never changed a diaper.

A large portion of my job is to receive ambulances and "start" the patient (monitor, EKG, blood sugar, vitals, remove/cut clothing, chest compressions, labs if line already started by medics), put in/remove foley's, splint (orthoglass--immobilizers, soft collars), and discharging with basic instructions. I also do quality controls on guiac and gastrocult tests, perform and check all the defibs and code carts in our department, check the trauma rooms (laryngoscopes, pumps, oxygen, glucometers), and occasionally run fast track (walking wounded -- no nurse, only a physician paired with a tech in a sub-section of our department.)

We have stock-techs to stock everything, transport picks up all of our patients -- unless they're critical, in which case nurse+tech go.

I was an EMT before I applied -- although I had never worked on an ambulance.

Go for it...It's actually a pretty nice job to have.

 

I won't comment on what techs do since others on this thread have already answered that question. I will tell you that you need to get the nomenclature right:

EM = Emergency medicine. The field of fast-paced medicine.
EP = Emergency physician. Someone who practices EM.
ED = Emergency department. The place where it all goes down.

Note, there is no such thing as an "ER." Even though popular media likes to use the term "emergency room," a hospital will have many rooms that are dedicated to emergency medicine. If you start throwing around the word "ER" while in an ED, expect to get corrected by at least two people before you leave. The emergency medicine thread on SDN has some interesting stories of med students' saying, "I want to be an ER doc," to residency program directors during interviews. The PD's are not so forgiving.

 

Oh, and for the record, Prowler is correct about orders. We do put in many orders, per "understood" protocols. If a patient comes in SOB or CP, for example, EKG is standard, as is your "rainbow" of common labs. Many times a portable chest is ordered, as well. If a patient comes in with obvious sign of hip or otherwise sign of obvious orthopedic injury/fracture, a foley, EKG, and blood-bank tube is standard for techs.

Likewise, many times we spike, prime, and hang bags of NS -- which technically is not within our scope. However, I'm not a nurse, nor a doctor, so I try not to make stupid mistakes to make someone's life easier.