Triage Licensed Practical Nurse

Imagine a busy emergency room. Possible heart attacks, broken bones, and gaping wounds all need attention. The waiting room is already full when an ambulance pulls up with critically injured victims from a car accident. Life flight is en route.

When a medical environment is this crazy, it requires the quick decision making and knowledge of a Triage Licensed Practical Nurse making sure everyone gets the care they need.

As a Triage Licensed Practical Nurse, you evaluate each patient’s needs. You ask questions, gather information, make an initial assessment, and find a room for the patient. On a slow night, you may only have a few patients, so you provide fast and immediate care to everyone. Other days, the chaotic environment will require you to assess the severity of each patient’s condition so that those with more severe injuries can be treated first.

When you’re not shuffling patients through the waiting room, you take vital signs and record symptoms in the patient’s chart. You assist Emergency Room Doctors and Emergency Room Nurses in bandaging wounds, cleaning cuts, preparing equipment, administering medications, and starting IVs.

Being a Triage Licensed Practical Nurse also means providing moral support in addition to assisting, evaluating, assessing, and caring for patients. You calm patients who are anxious, reassure family members, explain procedures to patients and their families, and offer a hand to squeeze and a shoulder to cry on.