When I graduated nursing school, my mom tried to talk me into taking a job in an ER or an OR. She was right that I wouldn't like the humdrum of med-surg or geriatric. She feared for me in psych. That was understandable when you consider that a psych patient jumped her with a knife on night and sliced her arm from wrist to shoulder. It had taken 131 stitches to close her up and she wasn't even a psych nurse. That particular patient had slipped the psych floor and was laying in wait in a visitor bathroom in the main lobby. My mom was just the person unlucky enough to be the next to walk in there.
Her worst fear, though, was realized when I took the job as a night shift RN on the NICU of All Saints Hospital. She tried to tell me that I couldn't handle it, that I would regret it, that the death and destruction in the maternity and NICU may have been more rare than that in the Emergency department, but it was also way more intense. But I figured, who knew more about the destruction that happened in maternity than me? So I took the job, donned the signature pink and blue scrubs of the Nursery and went to work. Three years, two botched home births, and getting too close to a baby going through heroin withdrawal, and I had to admit that she was right. I requested a transfer three weeks ago. There was only one department open, so tonight, I started work in my worst nightmare. The ER.