Cardiac Cath Lab

GilaRRT · Sep 29, 2008

Rotate through the cath lab every so often as part of my critical care flight clinical requirements. Very hands on area. From my experiences, two providers and a doc work the case. One provider will take a circulating/logistics position, while the other will be scrubbed in with the doc. The providers typically change roles between cases. Hope you like taking allot of call.

BookwormRN · Sep 29, 2008

Rotate through the cath lab every so often as part of my critical care flight clinical requirements. Very hands on area. From my experiences, two providers and a doc work the case. One provider will take a circulating/logistics position, while the other will be scrubbed in with the doc. The providers typically change roles between cases. Hope you like taking allot of call.

Thanks for the input, Gila.

I'll add on-call hours to my list of questions for tomorrow!!

Editorial Team / Admin · Sep 29, 2008

If you do a search of this site (upper right-hand corner), you will find many other threads asking the same question, and perhaps the comments in those threads will help as well.

Good luck! :)

ERNurse752, RN · Sep 30, 2008

I never worked in CL, but observed a few times when I worked ER.

Definitely extremely high tech. A lot of call, like the pp said. And any place I have worked, if they were on call, there was a pretty good they'd get called in!

Interesting...good money...but you will work a lot.

I've also heard a lot of staff wind up having neck/back problems after several years because of the lead they wear during cases.

patwil73 · Sep 30, 2008

I did a an assignment in Cath lab for 18 weeks. My duties included, preparing the medications needed, hooking the patient up to monitors and IV's, and conscious sedation. I never scrubbed in for the case - the tech's did that. Afterwards they held pressure and I reported off to the recovery unit.

History was acquired by the recovery unit before we even picked them up. They also started the IV's.

All in all it was a pretty "cushy" assignment - one patient at a time - mainly conscious sedation. Since we have no open heart unit here, we didn't place non-emergent stents.

Hope this helps

Pat

Sorry, forgot - for the interview:

1) Do you do recovery or do you hand off to another unit?

2) Do you utilize tech for the cases or are the nurses operating the fluoroscope? Meaning are you rotating into assisting the doctor insert the cath and operating the machinery.

3) Is it only a cardiac cath lab, or do you also work throughout radiology doing conscious sedation for thoracentesis, etc?

4) How is call rotated - small places might be every other weekend. Big places maybe once a month.

5) How long is the orientation (must for every job - but here there is a lot of things to memorize since you are the primary runner if things are needed)

6) Do you do balloon pump insertions, intercool catheters, neuro cath's and will you be sent to classes on them?

Hope this helps