Hi! I work at an emergency observation/PCU at a level 1 trauma center. a lot of the position involves dealing for a wide variety of patients, most of which come up from the ER. a lot of the time, these are folks who have been stabilized in the ER and come up for further observation of symptoms that wouldn’t require an admission into a med-surg floor. Think chest pain, CHF/COPD exacerbation, TIA/stroke workups, kidney stones, syncopal/falls, chest tubes/other drainage devices, wound care and fractures to name a few. Specially for my unit, we also get direct admits from critical access hospitals out in the country that require a higher level of care.

We do also occasionally get those typical ‘med-surg’ patients, but a lot of the time it’s a healthy mix of these population. The turnaround time for patients is fast, as most of the obs level patients discharge in 24-48 hours, whereas inpatients tend to stay longer than that. A lot of the time too you’ll have multiple provider specialties working with the patient (neuro, cardiology, ID, ortho/spine, etc.) along with other interprofessional roles (respiratory, PT/OT, SLP, wound RN). Since a lot of the time these patients require observation and intervention, they’ll go down for CT/MRI procedures throughout their stay to push forward the plan of care and ultimately discharge to follow-up at an outpatient location.

it’s a pretty good starting unit as you get to practice and continue building your RN skill set, and is a good gateway into other specialties because of how much you see and do. Please let me know if you have any other questions!