Cdu

The CDU's I've heard about are areas where patient from the ER are kept until the MD decides if he's going to admit them or send them home. Like someone waiting on their cardiac enzymes to come back.

This is just what I was told by a nurse I work with, she works part time in a CDU.

Clinical Decision Unit (CDU) meets the needs of patients who require evaluation, testing, treatment, and medical management for up to 24 hours. While in the CDU, physicians evaluate whether a patient can safely return home or whether the patient's condition requires admission to an inpatient unit to continue his/her care

Our CDU also takes any 24 hour observation patient, but I think it should probably be called something other than a CDU as the label doesn't match what we do.

If going for an interview I would ask how long they avg on time to patient discharge; whether the nurses are supported in keeping inappropriate patients from being admitted there (on our unit some patients stay 3 days or more!!!) or have support in getting them placed in more appropriate care units that are staffed to give bed baths, etc.; how patients get to the unit (only ER, or also direct admit or other ways?); and if the charting system is more like inpatient or outpatient charting...

you can make a lot of assumptions based on what most people say a CDU is... but being a new type of unit... they are not all the same... shadow in the unit on a day or night shift if you can.