What is an Emergency Room Nurse?

Emergency room nurses work alongside doctors and fellow nurses in hospitals or healthcare facilities, treating urgent medical cases. You will have to manage patients checking in and getting discharged as well as contributing to patient care.

Accidents, cardiac arrests, strokes, assaults, traumas, and allergic reactions will be on the menu for you, among many more options, of course. You will have to assess the needs of patients on the spot and assist in performing minor operations.

You need to be able to work in fast-paced and stressful environments and be quick on your feet to make confident decisions if you are considering working as an emergency room nurse. A degree from an accredited nursing program and a license will be necessary, but if you can check all the criteria, you can have a meaningful and rewarding job that will earn you around $62,010 a year.

What Does an Emergency Room Nurse Do

There are certain skills that many emergency room nurses have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed critical-thinking skills, communication skills and compassion.

Learn more about what an Emergency Room Nurse does

How To Become an Emergency Room Nurse

If you're interested in becoming an emergency room nurse, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 43.2% of emergency room nurses have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 7.8% of emergency room nurses have master's degrees. Even though most emergency room nurses have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become an Emergency Room Nurse

Top Emergency Room Nurse Jobs Near You

Emergency Room Nurse Career Paths

In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of staff nurse you might progress to a role such as team leader eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title director of case management.

Top Careers Before Emergency Room Nurse

Registered Nurse (646,159 Jobs)

26.5 %

Staff Nurse (699,636 Jobs)

24.7 %

Nurse (696,124 Jobs)

7.2 %

Top Careers After Emergency Room Nurse

Registered Nurse (646,159 Jobs)

26.7 %

Staff Nurse (699,636 Jobs)

16.2 %

Nurse (696,124 Jobs)

9.9 %

Average Salary for an Emergency Room Nurse

Emergency Room Nurses in America make an average salary of $79,886 per year or $38 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $126,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $50,000 per year.

Average Emergency Room Nurse Salary

$79,886 Yearly

$38.41 hourly

$50,00010%

$79,000Median

$126,00090%

See More Salary Information

What Am I Worth?

Roles and Types of Emergency Room Nurse

The role of an emergency room nurse includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general emergency room nurse responsibilities:

Advocate for and allocate available resources to promote efficient, effective, safe,
Stabilize patients experiencing trauma minimize pain quickly uncover medical conditions teach patients about injury prevention collects current symptoms, as well as a detailed patient history
Responsible for providing comprehensive behavioral health screening reports review

There are several types of emergency room nurse, including:

Registered Nurse

Role:

If you're looking for a job that will provide a lot of opportunities, you've come to the right place. Registered nurses are needed everywhere to provide patient care and educate patients about various health conditions.

All registered nurses need to be licensed, but there are three different ways you can go about it. One is earning a bachelor's degree in nursing. Another is to obtain an associate's degree in nursing. Or receive a diploma from a nursing program.

Average Salary: $73,349
Degree: Associate Degree

Staff Nurse

Role:

If healthcare is your name and helping patients is your game, then you might consider a career as a staff nurse. Typically, you'll work in a healthcare facility of some sort, whether that be a hospital or a nursing home.

As a staff nurse, you'll be working closely with doctors and other nurses to ensure patients receive the utmost care and treatment for their health conditions. Usually, this line of work seals the deal with crazy hours. But staff nurses tend to be a little different.

It can vary, but you usually won't work over 40 hours a week. In fact, some weeks you may only work 35 hours. This great schedule does come with a price tag - student debt, to be exact. In order to become a staff nurse, you'll need to earn a bachelor's degree. I mean, you have to know what you're doing in this job so that much makes sense.

Average Salary: $68,342
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Nurse

Role:

Nurses may seem to be just a cog in the machine of healthcare systems, but they are as essential as it gets. As trained healthcare professionals, they provide medical care for patients in hospitals or homes, caring for them before and after their medical procedures.

Working closely with physicians and other healthcare staff members, they plan and implement nursing care, evaluating the processes and assessing their efficiency.

Nurses are responsible for monitoring patients' symptoms and reporting any changes in their condition. They keep an eye on eventual side-effects of drugs and follow vital signs in severe cases. They administer pills and intravenous medication and create and maintain patient records. Properly managing the storage of medical substances they use on a daily basis and maintaining nursing supply inventory is also their responsibility.

It goes without saying that they keep facilities and work areas squeaky clean and comply with infection control standards without compromise.

Average Salary: $57,564
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

States With The Most Emergency Room Nurse Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active emergency room nurse jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where emergency room nurses earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Emergency Room Nurse Jobs By State

Rank	State	Number of Jobs	Average Salary
1	Florida	16,856	$76,949
2	Texas	15,981	$74,757
3	California	12,561	$113,512
4	Pennsylvania	9,620	$86,990
5	New York	8,721	$106,369
6	Ohio	7,553	$88,442
7	Massachusetts	6,571	$109,099
8	Georgia	6,431	$78,390
9	Illinois	6,240	$82,399
10	North Carolina	6,134	$79,178
11	Virginia	5,458	$85,819
12	Indiana	5,276	$70,757
13	Washington	4,870	$78,842
14	Michigan	4,818	$91,018
15	Tennessee	4,715	$76,667
16	New Jersey	4,591	$90,907
17	Maryland	3,925	$86,506
18	Colorado	3,719	$74,367
19	Arizona	3,707	$81,835
20	Missouri	3,456	$76,711
21	Minnesota	3,318	$83,190
22	South Carolina	3,115	$66,073
23	Wisconsin	3,046	$82,777
24	Louisiana	2,756	$79,558
25	Kentucky	2,329	$82,123
26	Oregon	2,274	$93,086
27	Iowa	2,261	$64,287
28	Alabama	2,202	$73,549
29	Oklahoma	2,159	$67,337
30	Connecticut	2,149	$98,196
31	Kansas	1,990	$71,271
32	Arkansas	1,780	$73,627
33	New Mexico	1,733	$87,373
34	New Hampshire	1,571	$97,547
35	Mississippi	1,357	$74,461
36	Nevada	1,316	$92,878
37	Nebraska	1,309	$70,751
38	Maine	1,231	$77,363
39	West Virginia	1,224	$68,667
40	South Dakota	958	$67,796
41	Montana	912	$77,984
42	Utah	897	$71,582
43	Delaware	850	$85,610
44	Idaho	827	$78,008
45	North Dakota	788	$71,653
46	Alaska	649	$81,873
47	Vermont	626	$80,555
48	Rhode Island	538	$104,571
49	Wyoming	395	$78,330
50	Hawaii	365	$138,666

Emergency Room Nurse Education

Emergency Room Nurse Majors

Nursing

83.6 %

Nursing Science

4.3 %

Business

1.6 %

Emergency Room Nurse Degrees

Admissions

Most Popular Majors

Nursing

Top Skills For an Emergency Room Nurse

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 21.9% of emergency room nurses listed patients on their resume, but soft skills such as critical-thinking skills and communication skills are important as well.

Patients, 21.9%

BLS, 14.3%

Acls, 10.3%

Triage, 6.3%

Acute Care, 6.3%

Other Skills, 40.9%

Choose From 10+ Customizable Emergency Room Nurse Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Emergency Room Nurse templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Emergency Room Nurse resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

Emergency Room Nurse Demographics

Emergency Room Nurse Gender Distribution

Female

80%

Male

20%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

Among emergency room nurses, 80.2% of them are women, while 19.8% are men.

The most common race/ethnicity among emergency room nurses is White, which makes up 65.8% of all emergency room nurses.

The most common foreign language among emergency room nurses is Spanish at 70.1%.

Online Courses For Emergency Room Nurse That You May Like

Advertising Disclosure

1. Trauma Emergencies and Care

Welcome to Trauma Emergencies and Care. In this course, you will learn about some of the mechanics and physics of trauma on the human body, and how this can cause injury. You will continue to expand your new vocabulary with medical terminology, and learn how to describe the different injuries you may see. You will also learn about the trauma system itself- and when it is important to transport patients to a trauma center. Then we will dive into specific injuries based on what part of the body...

See More on Coursera

2. Medical Emergencies: Airway, Breathing, and Circulation

In this course, you will develop the knowledge and skills to assess and stabilize certain types of patients for transport. By the end of this course, you will be able to: 1) assess a basic medical patient 2) describe general pharmacologic principles and the skills associated with medication administration, 3) explain airway physiology, the assessment of the airway and available interventions for airway management, 4) identify, assess and formulate a plan to stabilize a patient with a...

See More on Coursera

3. Medical Emergencies: CPR, Toxicology, and Wilderness

In this course, you will develop the knowledge and skills to assess and stabilize certain types of patients for transport. By the end of this course, you will be able to: (1) Identify the signs and symptoms associated with a patient in shock, to describe the major categories of shock, to assess a patient with signs of shock and formulate a plan for treatment to stabilize the patient for transport, (2) Identify a patient in cardiac arrest and to describe the components of high performance CPR...

See More on Coursera

Show More Emergency Room Nurse Courses

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Best States For an Emergency Room Nurse

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an emergency room nurse. The best states for people in this position are Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, and New York. Emergency room nurses make the most in Hawaii with an average salary of $138,666. Whereas in California and Massachusetts, they would average $113,512 and $109,099, respectively. While emergency room nurses would only make an average of $106,369 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. New Hampshire

Total Emergency Room Nurse Jobs: 1,571

Highest 10% Earn:

$165,000

Location Quotient:

1.36

$97,547

Avg. Salary

View 1,571 Emergency Room Nurse Jobs In NH

2. Massachusetts

Total Emergency Room Nurse Jobs: 6,571

Highest 10% Earn:

$183,000

Location Quotient:

1.08

$109,099

Avg. Salary

View 6,571 Emergency Room Nurse Jobs In MA

3. New York

Total Emergency Room Nurse Jobs: 8,721

Highest 10% Earn:

$182,000

Location Quotient:

1.03

$106,369

Avg. Salary

View 8,721 Emergency Room Nurse Jobs In NY

Full List Of Best States For Emergency Room Nurses

How Do Emergency Room Nurse Rate Their Jobs?

Top Emergency Room Nurse Employers

Most Common Employers For Emergency Room Nurse

Rank	Company	Average Salary	Hourly Rate	Job Openings
1	Aya Healthcare	$106,272	$51.09	27
2	Beaumont Health	$92,177	$44.32	15
3	Anders Group	$90,267	$43.40	14
4	Kaiser Permanente	$86,607	$41.64	36
5	University Hospitals	$86,404	$41.54	24
6	Tact Medical Staffing	$85,729	$41.22	21
7	Bon Secours Community Hospital	$85,266	$40.99	18
8	Memorial Hospital	$76,264	$36.67	17
9	Swedish Hospital	$76,239	$36.65	24
10	HealthTrust	$76,067	$36.57	30

Emergency Room Nurse Videos

Emergency Room Nurse, Career Video from drkit.org

Day in the Life: ER Nurse

ER Nurse | Emergency Room Nurse Salary and Job Description

Becoming an Emergency Room Nurse FAQs

Er Nurse Vs Icu Nurse

An ER nurse is a nursing professional who attends to patients in an emergency room, while an ICU nurse attends to patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital.

An ER nurse treats patients that have been admitted into the emergency room for a variety of illnesses and injuries. They have to act quickly because many times they are dealing with patients that have medical emergencies. These situations may include car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks. ER nurses also take care of people that are not in a life threatening scenario.

Have more questions? See all answers to common healthcare practitioner and technical questions.

Search For Emergency Room Nurse Jobs

Updated February 6, 2023

What is an Emergency Room Nurse?

What Does an Emergency Room Nurse Do

How To Become an Emergency Room Nurse

Emergency Room Nurse Career Paths

Top Careers Before Emergency Room Nurse

Top Careers After Emergency Room Nurse

Recent Job Searches

Average Salary for an Emergency Room Nurse

Roles and Types of Emergency Room Nurse

Registered Nurse

Staff Nurse

Nurse

States With The Most Emergency Room Nurse Jobs

Number Of Emergency Room Nurse Jobs By State

Emergency Room Nurse Education

Emergency Room Nurse Majors

Emergency Room Nurse Degrees

Top Colleges for Emergency Room Nurses

1. Duke University

2. University of Pennsylvania

3. Yale University

4. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

5. Georgetown University

6. University of California - Los Angeles

7. University of Virginia

8. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

9. Columbia University in the City of New York

10. Chamberlain College of Nursing - Arlington

Top Skills For an Emergency Room Nurse

Choose From 10+ Customizable Emergency Room Nurse Resume templates

Emergency Room Nurse Demographics

Emergency Room Nurse Gender Distribution

Online Courses For Emergency Room Nurse That You May Like

Best States For an Emergency Room Nurse

How Do Emergency Room Nurse Rate Their Jobs?

Top Emergency Room Nurse Employers

Most Common Employers For Emergency Room Nurse

Emergency Room Nurse Videos

Becoming an Emergency Room Nurse FAQs

Er Nurse Vs Icu Nurse

Search For Emergency Room Nurse Jobs

Emergency Room Nurse Related Careers

Emergency Room Nurse Related Jobs

Emergency Room Nurse Jobs By Location

Emergency Room Nurse Jobs By Company