CCU? What exactly is it?

[StayLost, BSN, RN]

I'm a recent grad and I am looking at GN Internships & I found a CCU position. Now I gathered that it's a cardiac care unit, but are CCU's like an ICU or step-down? Telemetry?

Thanks so much in advance.

[meandragonbrett]

Depends on the hospital. It can stand for:

Coronary Care Unit

Cardiac Care Unit

Critical Care Unit

Best thing is to ask the hospital what their CCU is.

[RNperdiem, RN]

At my hospital, the CCU is the ICU for cardiology patients. There is the same monitoring as in all the other ICU's.

When the patients become more stable, they transfer out to the cardiac stepdown unit or the cardiology floor.

[TakeBack]

Yep the acronym varies. Our ICU is called a CCU but it holds a typical med-surg critical care mix, with MICU, SICU, and CTS patients.

Step down- intermediate between ICU and floor in terms of RN-patient ratio, capacity for certain drugs/monitoring

Telemetry- "tele-" = "from a distance", "-metry" = "measurement/monitoring". Cardiac monitoring, but done from a central station not necessarily in the room.