Cardiac Observation Unit

[embeeRN]

I was wondering if I could reach out to all the nurses who work in a Cardiac Observation Unit (COU) and get an idea on what they do on their floor.

How many cardiac drips? How intense is the pace of the working environment? Is it kind of like an ER environment or acute care/medsurg environment? What types of nursing skills do you do often? (IVs, Foleys, NGs, Blood transfusions, etc). Is it considered an acute care floor? Nurse to Patient ratio?

Just want to get an overall idea :) Any information is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[mbuchanan2107]

Just to clarify, when you say Cardiac Observation Unit, are you referring to a chest pain center? I know many places call units different things. I did work in a chest pain unit and it was HELL. They had it attached to the cath lab, which did not make any sense. They had you take 6 patients and you could have simple patients who were going to undergo stress testing in the morning and likely be discharged after or you could have someone with a few more risk factors undergoing a cath in the morning. Since we weren't really a typical floor, we could not take high risk patients since the cath lab closes at night and they only had 2 nurses for nights. We did get some drips, but not many. Only when we called a doctor past 10pm with a patient complaining of more chest pain, then we got the "list" of stuff to keep us busy so we wouldn't bother him anymore. Not sure if this answers your question, but hope it helps.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

the most important thing, in my opinion, is glaringly absent in your post. that would be "assessment skills." focus on tasks, drips, procedures, and the like, and you'll be missing a lot. i know this is very, very common in new grads and recent grads, and is a continuation of the lab-skills-checkoff that they all do. i get that. but at this point, with professional responsibility for assessing ongoing conditions in an area where speed can matter greatly, i urge you to rethink this mindset.

what you want to know is, "how good should my cardiac assessment skills be before i assume this responsibility?" and "if i am new to assessing and treating acute cardiac problems, how much support and education will i get (before i start and ongoing)?"