If your urgent care clinic is following the minimum standards required by Ireland, you may not feel safe at work as an urgent care nurse.

When you don’t feel like you’re safe, you won’t be able to do your job effectively. Urgent care clinics are a necessity in many communities because when people need immediate medical care, they are the places that they go first. For this reason, nurses and other medical personnel safety is crucial.

Are you an urgent care nurse that is worried about general safety at work? Do you have specific concerns about what you can do to keep yourself or your coworkers safe?

If so, keep reading below as we explore what type of role you have, the challenges you face, and what you can do to remain safe.

What Is Urgent Care vs Primary Care?

An urgent care facility is a same-day clinic. This is a location that will be able to deal with many different types of immediate care situations that are not life-threatening. Usually, these clinics are open outside of standard business hours.

Primary care facilities, alternatively, are facilities that include more generalized healthcare providers, like internists, GPs, or family medicine health professionals. These are individuals that are trained and specialized in preventative care and promoting healthy lifestyles.

If someone is experiencing an issue and they aren’t sure if primary care or urgent care is more appropriate, urgent care is generally a safer choice because they are more equipped to handle emergent situations.

Responsibilities of an Urgent Care Nurse

Because urgent care facilities are consistently seeing patients that are in immediate need of attention, urgent care nurses have to be extremely flexible.

A lot of the training that they get relates to medical issues that can come up across the board as well because a person can come into the clinic with any type of ailment. Even so, people are encouraged to go to emergency rooms if they feel life-threatening problems come on, such as chest pain or difficulty breathing.

The responsibilities of a typical urgent care nurse in Ireland include:

• Helping a patient feel more comfortable
• Easing a patient’s worries
• Taking patient vital signs as part of an overall assessment
• Assessing whether more emergent care is needed
• Discussing what has happened and symptoms related to the ailment
• Providing information about potential treatment options

Urgent care nurses are going to see many types of problems that people may have, whether it is the flu, a sprained ankle, dehydration, or small cuts that need stitches.

For the most part, urgent care nurses do the same jobs as other nurses, but the types of issues that they see patients come in with are going to change based on their location.

Safety Challenges Related to Healthcare Jobs in Ireland

Before the pandemic, there were still many health and safety challenges that essential healthcare workers in Ireland faced. As of today, these challenges have grown and changed.

A few of the more general safety challenges that impact some of the healthcare workers, including urgent care nurses, in this country include:

• Poor work posture and heavy workloads
• Working excessive hours without rest or break periods
• Psychological or emotional stress
• Working additional hours without receiving compensation
• Various conditions of employment based on where you work
• Discrimination in the workplace
• Hazards from radiological equipment
• Not getting the correct training to perform all duties required
• Exposure to biological agents and chemical substances
• General accidents at work (i.e. cuts, falls, needle exposure, etc.)
• Physically violent patients

Healthcare workers in Ireland do receive training on how to handle or avoid many of these challenges, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen anyway. Before someone chooses to join the medical field, they must know what risks and hazards they could face.

How Has COVID-19 Impacted Rural Medicine Safety?

Whether it’s corporate health jobs or student health jobs, safety is a priority for healthcare workers in Ireland at all times.

A big reason for this is that they have to be able to take care of the patients that come to see them. This is difficult to do if they are dealing with personal concerns that impact the efficacy of their work.

As of the start of the pandemic, precautions have shifted to ensure that individuals working in rural medicine jobs or family medicine jobs could remain safe while providing care.

Specific COVID-19 safety challenges that have come up for nurses and doctors include:

• Lack of necessary equipment, including oxygen and body bags
• Sick colleagues
• Mental health deterioration
• Burn out
• Angry or irrational patient family members
• Additional work hours required

Rural medicine urgent clinics and the nurses that work in them have even less access to necessary equipment and providers than other, more urban clinics have. Many of these clinics in Ireland have suffered through the pandemic as a result.

Future of Care Challenges for Family Medicine and Doctor Jobs vs Urgent Care Jobs

The requirements for someone working primary care jobs are not the same as someone working urgent care jobs. The clear reason for this is that the responsibilities and types of patients seen are going to be vastly different.

Because of this, the future of care challenges will also be different.

For the most part, family medicine workers have a more standardized schedule and see patients by appointment rather than as they come in. Urgent care providers see patients on a needs basis, which means they can walk in to be seen on the same day.

Both of these types of facilities are dealing with severe issues related to lack of resources and increased need. People are coming to see them with issues that are on a wide range, so having the necessary equipment, materials, and staff on hand is difficult.

In addition to these concerns, it has been noticed that fewer and fewer people are interested in healthcare jobs. As a result, the health sector in Ireland is going to potentially face a shortage in the future across the board.

With these more general problems comes the issue of overall care. Providers won’t be able to give the necessary care they need if they are being overworked even more than they are now. For this reason, change is needed.

This doesn’t mean that working as a nurse or other healthcare professional isn’t a fulfilling career path. In fact, there are many reasons why now is the perfect time to get into the health sector.

Our Top Tips to Stay Safe as an Urgent Care Nurse

Being a nurse is a difficult, but important, job. As a nurse, you have to make sure that you keep yourself safe to provide the highest level of care possible.

One thing that cannot be stressed enough is the need to practice needle safety. The reason this is first on this list is that needle sticks are extremely common among nursing professionals.

You should always think about your own physical safety when with a patient or family member. If you are not sure, it is better to bring someone with you. Physical violence is an issue that nursing professionals face regularly, and even if it has never happened to you, you should always be cautious.

Another important tip is to make sure you are eating and drinking regularly. You need to stay hydrated and well-fed to keep your energy up, remain healthy, and think critically.

Remember the reasons that someone is visiting your urgent care clinic and don the appropriate PPE to protect yourself from illness. If someone is there for flu-like symptoms, for example, you should make sure that you’re protecting yourself from getting sick as well.

Moving your body in the same way repeatedly can be wearing on the joints and muscles that you use every day. Foot or knee problems are not uncommon. Pay attention to the way you feel physically, and if you notice any changes, be sure to get the medical attention you need:

Additional Safety Tips Related to COVID-19

To protect yourself from COVID-19, there are additional precautions you’ll want to follow. These include:

• Adhere to all of the standards for PPE
• Do not touch your PPE with your hands
• Wash your hands before and after donning PPE
• Use hand hygiene practices before eating and drinking
• Disinfect your cellphone regularly
• Change your scrubs (and shoes) before returning home

Not only will these practices keep you safe from COVID-19 infection, but they are also a good way to avoid other types of contagious illnesses as well.

Staying Safe in Urgent Care

Being an urgent care nurse is an essential job, but that doesn’t mean it is always easy. Nurses have to work very hard to get their job done.

Even so, nursing is a rewarding career that can give you a lot of opportunities to give back to the community. If this sounds like a challenge you want to take on, nursing may be the perfect career for you.

Are you interested in learning more about working in urgent care? If so, be sure to contact us today.