Reacting patients after surgery

[trixie]

I work at a hospital with a 12 bed ICU. I was wondering if any hospital of similar size has their ICU nurses react patients after surgery if they aren't busy. If the PACU nurses are going to get overtime, the hospital prefers them to go home and have the ICU nurse do the react. Surgery takes the patient up to the unit. Especially if the patient is an ICU patient, and going to go there anyway. The ICU nurses hate it. Just wondering if this goes on elsewhere. Thanks.

[New CCU RN]

I am assuming react means recover? I have just never heard it being called react. Anyhow, I am in a larger hospital, 6 ICU's neurosurg, cardiac surg, surgical, trauma, cardiac, and medical are all seperate ICU's. The medical ICU's ie) cicu, micu will not under any circumstances recover patients.... it is a written protocol which is enforced (although it does get some grief) while the surgical icu's will recover... cardiac surg, trauma, etc...

The medical ICU's often will get overflow patients from other ICU's and although they may come back vented the rationale is that the medical ICU nurses are not trained to recover and do not have the staffing ratios to safely care for an immediate post op patient. Our medical directors are the ones that actually have decided this, so when some anethesia resident tries to give us a hard time, we gladly refer them to the higher ups...

[trixie]

Yes, by react I mean recover. We only have 1 ICU, anything major gets transported out to a larger facility. Thanks for your feedback.

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

We have always recovered ICU patients in ICU but we do not have teh SICU?MICU division here that you do in the states it's CCU or ICU. CCU never recovers patients as said above we just do nto have teh staffing ratios and it is better to revcover them for the short time required in teh rrecovery unit and then bring them to CCU.

[Jill - Pa]

The only time our ICU reacts patients is on nightshift when our PACU (recovery room) staff is not there.

Jill (Pa)

[Elenaster]

We recover patients all the time and the Neurosurgeons prefer us to do it, actually. They come straight from the OR to the unit with the Anesthesia Resident/CRNA with them.

This was the case when I worked in CT-ICU as well and the unit actually adjoined the OR.

[KR]

Yes, all of the hospitals I have worked at have had us ICU nurses recover patients, from time to time, mostly late at night, or when PACU was really busy. The only time any of the nurses did not mind it was when, it was the post open heart unit, they always got patients direct from the OR, this was policy. Hope this helps!