Bone Marrow Transplant nurse

allnurses Guide · Feb 23, 2010

I have not been a transplant nurse, but my son had an allo SCT from umbilical cord blood. He had C.Diff numerous times, aspergillosis, CMV and numerous fevers with negative blood cultures (which he needed practically all. the. time.) and ultimately died of ARDS. He was in hell from the treatment, the aftermath, the endless wait to see if things grafted and for his counts to come up.

BMT is a grueling process, hard on both patient and family. The nurses who worked with us were an amazing, special bunch of people. The survival rate for BMT is still not impressive and emotionally the patient and family suffer a great deal. I am currently in nursing school and seriously considering becoming a transplant nurse. It is a position I think that tends to have a lower client to nurse ratio, but that is due to the intense care these patients require. I personally think it would be incredibly rewarding. Congrats on the job offer and best of luck!

firstyearstudent · Feb 23, 2010

I came onto a BMT unit as a new grad. But the unit I am on only does autologous transplants and conditioning for allogeneic/MUD transplants. The downside is that the patient population is always the same and the drugs are always the same and I have not gotten a lot of experience with a diverse patient population. I still cannot do IV sticks well since all our patients have central lines and in three years I have put in two Foleys and one NG tube.

The upside is that the majority of our patients are walky-talkies. Occasionally we get a total care patient because of severe GVHD or some other complication, but for the most part, they do not do transplants on our unit unless the patient is in remission and relatively healthy. In fact, it's kind of disturbing when a seemingly strong, healthy person comes on the unit and we make them a physical and emotional wreck.