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Discussion

Call me crazy but...

Ok, so recently I have changed jobs and moved into an ICU setting. I went through orientation with my other cohorts that started at the same time as me and now we are independent nurses. The scary part is that we recieved a very poor education on drips that run in the critical care setting. A bunch of us newbies were discussing how nice it would be to have a class on the drips to better familarize ourselves with them so that ,you know, we wouldn't accidently KILL someone with our inept knowledge. But in this facility you don't learn the drips until you have been there a year to take the fresh open hearts. Isn't this just crazy? Maybe it is just me that thinks this is insane, but I have certainly started looking at my options of getting out of there. What do you all think?

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Soooo--educate yourself! There's tons of articles, books, etc. out there. Also critical care classes galore. If you still need help, ask your education dept. to step in, or ask management for preseptors. It's your license--and nurses never stop learning. I've been in critical care for over 20 years and there's always something to learn.

I don't see how you can adequately take care of ICU patients without knowing about the IV drips that we so frequently use. Are they planning on not assigning you to these patients until after the year is up? This is an integral part of an ICU nurse's knowledge base. We have what we call an Intern program where I work. We take either new grads or experienced nurses who work in other disciplines who want to work in our ICU and give them a pretty extensive orientation (both classroom and at the bedside with a preceptor). From day 1 we incorporate the drip teaching. It's particularly effective when we have a patient on a particular drip and the intern is actually able to titrate, watch its effects, and learn more about the drug with my guidance.

Oh heck yes...educate yourself! I have also seen some very inexpensive IV training courses at local community colleges, like the non credit refresher courses over a weekend. Two nurses at my facility took them just because it had been years since they did an IV...but we don't deal with those at my facility, and I have a teacher at home for times when I need the training! (married a paramedic...talk about a walking calculator on ratios and drip rates!!!).

The book "IV therapy Made Incredibly Easy" is a great book for learning and refreshing your skills :)...I still have mine and combined with the fluid and electrolyte one...will give you confidence for sure! I love those books! Not too long, down to the point, and fun to boot!

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