ER Nurse Salary and Job Description

Quick overview of typical emergency room nursing salaries, job descriptions, and how to start a career as an ER travel nurse.

Frequently Asked Questions about ER Nursing

A career in Emergency Room travel nursing can provide RNs with the intense reward of saving lives in a variety of professional settings.

Is there a Typical Emergency Room Nursing Job Description?

ER nurses collaborate with doctors and other clinicians to provide urgent and acute treatment that may prevent permanent disability or even be life-saving. While ER care is most often provided in hospitals, it can also be provided in various other settings such as Ambulatory Surgery Centers. ER nursing jobs vary depending on the clinical setting. The ER nurse job is typically fast-paced and requires experience, training, and quick mental reflexes to be able to rapidly assess a wide variety of medical situations and respond effectively. Specific duties can vary but may include cleaning and bandaging wounds, administering medications, monitoring diagnostic equipment, providing critical assistance to the medical team such as the on-call ER physician, and interacting compassionately with anxious family members accompanying the patient to the ER.

What is the Average Emergency Room Nurse Salary?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the annual median salary for all Registered Nurses (RNs) is $86,070. ER staff nurse median annual salary is $86,737 per ZipRecruiter, with San Mateo County, CA, Frankston, TX, and Dimondale, MI among the highest-paying locales in the nation at $127,674. However, many factors contribute to ER staff nurse salaries, such as the average hospital RN salary in a geographic area, whether the healthcare facility offers inpatient or outpatient services, and the nurse's level of education and ER experience. The median pay for an entry-level ER nurse is $42/hour or $86,737/year, and nearly all ER nurses can experience an increase in pay with overtime hours.

What are the Duties and Functions of an Emergency Room Nurse?

The primary function of an Emergency Room nurse is to provide nursing care to patients who are experiencing critical trauma, injuries, or illnesses. These patients can be adults, children, or even newborns. RNs who specialize in emergency nursing can recognize life-threatening conditions while rapidly prioritizing and delivering appropriate care. Besides hospitals, Emergency Room RNs practice in outpatient surgery and urgent care centers, inside ambulances, at large public events, on cruise ships, through disaster relief organizations, and as part of helicopter evacuation teams. Forbes Magazine reported 611 mass shootings in 2022 as of November 25, 2022, and gunshot-wound victims frequently require rapid treatment in hospital ERs that involve care provided by ER nurses as part of the clinical ER team.

How Does Working in an Emergency Room in a Hospital Differ from an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) for an ER Nurse?

Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) are becoming a more customary site for cataract surgeries, joint replacements, plastic surgery, and other invasive procedures not normally requiring an overnight hospital stay. Around 23 million surgical procedures each year are now performed in ASCs rather than hospitals. Since adverse events do sometimes occur in patients who are deemed at low risk, most ASCs have on-site ER nurses in case of emergency. The role of the ER team in an outpatient surgery setting is typically to stabilize the patient and then transfer that patient to a hospital.

Can a Travel ER Nurse Earn More than a Staff ER Nurse?

Yes. Besides the potential to earn higher travel pay than a staff ER nurse, travel nurses receive an array of benefits. These extra benefits include coverage for travel costs and temporary housing while engaged in a travel nurse position, as well as reimbursement for licensure costs and required Continuing Education Units (CEUs). Travelers are also eligible for bonuses, and because they are already filling in for a stretched-thin staff, travelers are likely to have lots of overtime opportunities.

How Do You Become an ER Travel Nurse?

The first step to a career in ER travel nursing is to become a Registered Nurse (RN). After completing a two-year Associate Degree (AS) in nursing or a four-year Bachelor of Science (BS) in nursing, the graduate needs to pass the NCLEX exam to become a practicing RN. To work in an Emergency Room setting, ER nurses must first obtain the following additional credentials:

All ER nurses must have an American Heart Association Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) credential.
Most travel positions will also require a Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) and/or TNCC (Trauma Nurse Core Course) credential.
Optional additional credentials that ER nurses could pursue to advance their careers include the Certified Emergency Nurse (CEN) and Crisis Prevention and Intervention (CPI) certifications

Possessing additional certifications such as the CEN along with RN licensure can make acquiring an ER travel nurse assignment more likely than without such a credential. However, RNs with significant prior ER experience can still work an ER travel nurse assignment due to the high current need for nurses in this valued specialty.