[cathlabrn]

I definitely remember the Bad ole days, dutchgirl. When we first started
angioplasty, you could count on v-fib showing up more than once in a case.
Complications were part of everyday life. Stents are wonderful, but it took
a while to get them perfected, that't for sure. And then, it took forever to
stop groin bleeding. You could barely chart when you got done because your hands were so stiff.
Things are better for everyone, staff and patients.
Life is good!
Now, we concentrate on door to balloon time.
How's everyone doing with that? Our average, off hours is 67 minutes.:hatparty: Keep up the good work everyone!
Cath lab nurses are awesome!

[dianah]

(Dutch: go to your profile area and amend your signature with whatever quote[s] you want. As premium member, we only get four lines, though; platinum gets more, I believe. )

I remember the old days of using high-osmolar, ionic contrast agents like Conray 60: can we say BRADYCARDIA with an RCA injection??? "COUGH!! COUGH!!!"

[Marchantia]

Well first of all thanks for keeping this thread active.

Gosh compared to you guys i still feel like a toddler. My nursing experience is barely 4 years of which 2 and a half of those have been in the cathlab. Well in terms of the capacity that we handle i would say that we are a small facility, but we see it all. You name it and we do it, coronary diagnostic and intervention procedures, EP and ablation studies, PPM, ICD's loop recorder insertions, PTMC, and of course congenital heart defect closures ( e.g. ASD, VSD, PDA). We get patients as old as a day old to somtimes an 80 year old.

keep on posting and keep this thread active

[jrmom]

Hi there
nursing 20 yrs
CCU/ICU background, now work cath lab for 5 yrs. I love it, great job, BUT highly stressful and competitive with high turnover rate, always vacancies.

we have 2 labs
17-20 angiograms a day
4-6 angioplasties a day
do cardioversions, implantable defibrillators, EPS, permanent pacemaker implatations (in the OR, but use our nurses)
WHEW, lots of OT and on call

[rnurse2b]

Hello everyone!
I'm so excited to see the CathLab portion added. I recently started in the cath lab after thinking about it for a couple of years and now I wish I hadn't waited. I absolutely love it!
Yes, the nurses I work with are type A personalities, we have a good mix of men also. We do pretty much the same as the previous posters, we have 3 cath labs in our unit.
Hope to see more from the cath lab

[angel110600]

Hi I am a cath lab RN with a specialty in electrophysiology! I love it, love it. I came straight from the floor to EP first. I actually had to study A LOT! I live in Iowa. We are in the top 1% for drug coated stent placement. We have surgical back up but hardly use it! We have 8 cath labs with two lab having bi-plane technology.

We perform angiograms, right heart caths, stent placements, angioplasty, rotoblader, thrombolectomy, PTA's, vena cava filters, IABP instertion and change outs,ICD's, pacemakers, bi-V pacemakers and ICD, EP studies, lead extractions, a-fib ablations, cyro-ablations, laser technologies, and tilt table testing.

There are 23 cardiologists and 4 electrophysiologists. 17 are interventional cardiologists. The practice is very very busy! We also serve the greater eastern Iowa and northestern part of Illiniois cath labs that do not perform interventions. Usually these are diagnostic caths and if it is a difficult intervention, they patients are flown up to our facility.

Our facility is a level II trauma center. We perform about 30-40 procedures a day. In addition, 4-5 EP procedures. Our cath lab has over 40 staff with a mix of RTR and RN's. We have a seond shift (3p-11:30p) and a call team who comes in at 3pm and works until the cases are done. If the call team works past 2am, they do not have to return to work the next day.

We also have one EP staff member on call every night until 7am. We have 5 dedicated EP staff. Each takes one call night a week and then rotate the weekends every 5th weekend. The two other staff members for the EP team comes from the cath lab call team.

In the cath lab, 4 people are on a call team. Everyone has one call night a week and rotates every 6th weekend. Unless you have senority and there are enough staff members to cover the weeknights, you only have to take call every 6th weekend. Our hospital policy is that no one should work 16 hours striaght so we make sure our call teams are well rested. They are not required to come in until 3pm and if they work past 2am, they are not required to come in the next day.

As for time off, we can have two full weeks of vaction every year that is gaurenteed! We are only allowed to have 3 people off at one time. Even if we do not have PTO stored up we are still granted two weeks. Our staff is very good about helping each other out when we have personal issues or need to get to a family functions. We have 5 paid holidays, and three sick days a year.

We are not a teaching hospital, so we work very closely with our docs. We have an awesome physician/nurse relationship! Although, we have these things, we are still tired and want to hire more people, but as you say it's all policitcal!

[angel110600]

HA HA HA! I do that a lot! COUGH COUGH COUGH!

[angel110600]

Originally Posted by cathlabrn

I definitely remember the Bad ole days, dutchgirl. When we first started
angioplasty, you could count on v-fib showing up more than once in a case.
Complications were part of everyday life. Stents are wonderful, but it took
a while to get them perfected, that't for sure. And then, it took forever to
stop groin bleeding. You could barely chart when you got done because your hands were so stiff.
Things are better for everyone, staff and patients.
Life is good!
Now, we concentrate on door to balloon time.
How's everyone doing with that? Our average, off hours is 67 minutes.:hatparty: Keep up the good work everyone!
Cath lab nurses are awesome!

Our average is 30mins! Our fastest is 17 min! It's crazy!

[jobyjoz]

Hi everyone!!
I have been a cath lab nurse for 10 years. I love every minute of it. I am predominantly non clinical now. But I love the clinical side the best. On call, even at 2 am, gives me an adrenaline rush. I find acute work very rewarding. It is very nice to know that I am not a loner.