Got told our/ any neuro ICU is not really an intensive care unit

are you kidding??/ When is a patient ONLY neuro?? bc brain injured patients NEVER have anything else wrong with them. (rolling eyes). The minute a pt becomes neuro-even if they are primarily trauma they come straight to the neuro ICU...hmmmm...you should tell your friend specialties are more criticial than general ICUs bc we not only take basic patients (medical/trauma) and add neuro on top of that. The long and short of it we can do everthing trauma can do plus specialize in neuro. Your friend can only do trauma..boo.

Really? Cause I think it varies greatly by facility. I work at a large level 1 trauma ICU. Our trauma ICU is considered the most specialized place in the hospital, where the sickest heads go. The docs will only send our heads to the neuro ICU once they feel they are stable enough to leave the trauma ICU. Our nurses in the trauma ICU are much more qualified and specialized than our neuro ICU. We even have a few neuro guys who send there heads to the trauma step-down unit and bypass the neuro ICU altogether because they like that floor better.

It just depends on the hospital. I think the above are blanket statements and do not make you sound very knowledgable.

The nurse who said that needs a Neuro check, as her brain truly isn't functioning properly if she believes that! We have some of the sickest patients around....there is one maybe two words that describe her statement....jealously...or...ignorance. (Possibly both) Either way, embrace and enjoy our specialty, we truly making a difference in peoples lives when they have no control over their own. Although not all look at the big picture, you can rest assured she is in many instances the minority.

A lot of the nurses in my ICU have that opinion of the Trauma Neuro ICU nurses and I don't know why. I guess they assume that people are always in the prime of life with no other problems when they get into accidents, etc and that their issues are more easily fixed.

I don't buy that for a second cause from where I see it, there's a HUGE difference between what they do and what we do (most of the time--when we're not sharing pts via overflow rules, etc). I've never cared much for neuro stuff and I don't know if it's cause I'm not comfortable with it or because I don't like it, but that's the way it is. I mean, I don't know how to do ICP monitoring and stuff, but I'm glad there's a unit that specializes in that at our facility!

I hate it when the floors badmouth each other cause it's bad for the teamwork aspect of the job. I've floated up to the trauma unit before and I like it cause they typically give us the easiest patients (I heard one of the ICU nurses a long time ago accidentally hooked up a ventriculostomy to suction and they've never viewed us the same way since!!) and I got to learn about more of the stuff they do up there.