Beep, Beep, Beep,
Beeeeeeeeep! The sound plays over and over in the mind, resonating like a song
stuck on replay. The job of an ER nurse is traumatic, patients die every five
minutes each day, and all one can do is try to stay strong. Forty-one year old Rosa
Estrada has been a registered nurse for about five years now. She is recently
divorced with two kids, a sixteen-year-old son named Michael, and a twenty-year-old
daughter named Lisette. She works at a small hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada
called North Vista Hospital. She works thirty-six hours weekly, and twelve
hours daily for three days a week. She explains, “I get up at 5 am, get dressed,
leave the house by 6 am get lunch from Albertsons, (no way do I eat the
cafeteria food), get a coffee from Starbucks, get to work by 7 am and start,
then by the end of the day if I do not work overtime I get home by 8 pm.” It is
a rush she says right after you clock in, “all hell breaks loose… literally.” ‘Ring’
a call comes in that an ambulance is on their way, all the nurses’ rush to get
a room unoccupied. If all the rooms are
occupied they move a patient that is not that sick to the waiting room while
they take care of the urgent call. Once the room is emptied they move in all
the equipment (a shock machine, IV’s, and repertories), three or four nurses
and a doctor are notified about the situation immediately and are ready as the
ambulance arrives. Once there, they get a Gurnee for the patient rush them to
the room and start CPR. Once the patient is unresponsive they do drastic
measures, like the shock machine (if there is no pulse they do not use the
shock machine). After 10 or 15 minutes of no response the doctor pronounces the
patient dead. “The guilt of not being able to save a life is the hardest,
especially the young patients not so much older ones, because at least they had
children and had a life, but the young ones have just started living.” Another
hard part is telling the family she says, “the look on their faces is the
worst, cursing, yelling, the agony is what taunts her at night.” She told a
story of a woman who was 65 years old, she had arrived from an ambulance, just
had a heart attack in which was fatal and explained how she tried and tried to
bring her back to life, the family was outside waiting for the results when the
doctor had pronounced her dead. The family was devastated and started to blame
Rosa accusing her of murder and the doctor had to calm down the family, and she
was sent back to her duties. “At first it hurts, but if you do not move forward
you will not do well in this job.” She was inspired by her ex-husband to become
a nurse (he was a ER nurse as well); she thought she would do better than him,
because “he kept bitching about it.” She got her nursing license in 6 years. I
asked about her idea of death, “I am not afraid of death, I have not thought
about it much, also it does not affect me as much being surrounded by it, “I
just hope it is when I am old and useless,” she giggles. She is fortunate to
only work with patients between ages 27-52. She explained that her job affects
her lifestyle and social life a lot. She is on foot 12 to 13 hours daily, no
desks, there with the patients all the time giving them pills, vaccines, doing
paperwork, and checking all their charts of when they are able to go home. It
also affects social life “I get home so late, I do not get time to go out with
friends or even the gym.” Lastly I asked if she enjoys her job? She responded “yes!
I do, I would not change anything, even if it were stressful and affecting socially.”
She recommends to all future nurses, “if you have the patience for it for all
means do it, it feels so good to be able to save lives and help people.” “I
once saved a man named Julio with breathing problems, I had lost him and within
three minutes he came back and thanked me it was the best feeling in the world,
that reminds me why I am meant to do this job.” In the end I asked her it is
worth it? “Yea, but I did tell my daughter to become a pharmacist instead less
stressful then a nurse,” as she ended with a chuckle.
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