CCU vs. ICU

[FlashGrad]

What is the difference between CCU and ICU? Also, is there generally a difference in nurse to patient ratio?

[neneRN, BSN, RN]

CCU is one of the ICUs; just ideally gets the really sick cardiac pts...in reality though, they often end up with general medical ICU pts too. Same as other ICUs as far as ratio- norm is one RN to 2 pts, occasionally 1:1 or 1:3.

[GilaRRT]

Depends on your facility. In some cases, CCU and ICU are used interchangeably. Other times, CCU may mean Cardiac Care Unit and provide cardiac specific care. In some cases ICU's are specialized. For example, you may see Neuro ICU's and Pedi ICU's. I have even seen a facility with a SCU. Special care unit that provided critical care.

[NeoNurseTX, RN]

Same thing, but if it's a Coronary Care Unit, focuses mostly on MI pts right after the MI and people coming back from PCI. Gets overflow from other ICUs, same ratios. A CCU is just a specialized type of ICU.

[anettegomes]

The ratio of staff nurse : patient is normally based on the condition of the patients and also depends on the number of staff available on duty.The ideal is 1:1 in the ICU or CCU.

The CCU is meant only for cardiac cases and the ICU is meant for other medical cases. But with specialization, many tertiary hospitals have many ICU"S like the medical ICU, surgical ICU, neuro and neuro surgery ICU, trauma ICU, etc......so it depends on each hospital setting.

[nurse4theplanet, RN]

ICU is the general term for any critical care unit, usually consisting of medical-surgical patients. CCU normally refers to the Coronary Care Unit which involves pts with severe cardiac problems and post-cardiac surgeries. However, smaller hospitals may not have two distinct units, where larger hospitals will. And even then, one type of unit may receive overflow from the other depending on census and staffing.

Our CCU consists of 8 beds and we take 1-2 post-op CABG's a day, 3 on a busy day or when there is an emergency surgery. They are 1:1 for the first four hours. If they come back with a balloon pump or CRRT they are 1:1 for the duration of that intervention. Otherwise, each nurse has 2 patients just like in the med-surgical ICU. Other CCU pt's include post MI's, AAA's, Fem-Pop's, Acute CVA's, etc.