Cardiac ICU

poppycat, ADN, BSN · Sep 26, 2014

I don't have any advice but did want to wish you good luck on your interview. Be sure to come back & let us know how it goes.

Guest343211 · Oct 17, 2014

Good luck to you. Of course you have to have an open mind; but for some strange reason, I have found that peds CICUs can be highly political. You will have to feel out your shop for yourself; but there are some nurses that are head trips, and they want to not help you limit or avoid mistakes, but wait with baited breath until a nurse either makes one or is close to it. I have seen them make a number of nurses' lives miserable; b/c they can be total jerks with the weed-out process. Sure, some people aren't meant to work in the area, and others definitely are, and are pretty smart. Don't be too bright or too dumb while you are in your first 6 mo.s to a year. You could be seen as a threat. You will find out quickly enough who the toxic people are. Strangely enough, they are usually very influential with mgt and the director of cardiac services on the nursing side.

My advice is to keep your mouth shut, your eyes wide open, and see if you can find people that actually want to see you succeed and be part of the team. You'll be surprised how nurses can behave when they feel threatened for some reason.

I have worked a lot of areas of critical care--peds cards ICU has been, by far, the most severely political. People tend to stay about a year or so, unless they are one of the weeders or just lucky. Whatever you do. Don't follow suit with the weeders. They are the reason nursing has so many problems. Their very mentality is toxic, and it's a toxicity that permeates in too much of nursing. Thing is, you have to be able to tell what they are about as they are smiling right at you.

Seriously, watch your back. There is already enough stress in the area between having so many neonates with congenital heart defects that you must learn about--and every kid's is pretty much different from another's. You have kids come in from all over the world. Weird pulm related problems and heart, lung, and heart/lung transplants, etc. There are definitely those kids that don't make it on ECMO or whatever the situation is for them.

The thing is, it's already stressful enough without these toxic weeders. Mgt and leadership usually don't try to get rid of them, b/c a lot of times they are pretty good at what they do, take on extra shifts and charge rolls and so forth in order to get more favor and influence. God they have input in your schedule, while they make the schedule nicer for their friends, and you don't even know it until it's too late for you to do anything about it. The managers kiss their orifices many times, and that is a HUGE part of the problem. If I were manager over some of these units, I'd work on fixing that toxicity straight away. But most managers are looking to make their next step up, so they don't want to rock the boat.

Just be quite and keep your eyes open. Hopefully your shop will NOT be like some of the CI's my cohorts and I have seen. If yours is truly like that, kiss the ground, thank God and your lucky stars.

Good luck.

AHeart4Kids · Oct 21, 2014

Samadams you hit the nail square on the head. Could you PM me?? I think you may be talking about where I interviewed.