Clinical Decision Unit??

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Specializes in Surgical Critical Care.

I graduate in December and have been searching and applying for jobs. What is typically considered to be on a Clinical Decision Unit?? I've seen it many places and cannot get a clear explanation of what it is.

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Specializes in ER.

Clinical Decison Unit is like a 23 hr observation unit...halfway between floor nursing and the emergency department. They need more testing than the ED can provide, but don't need to complete inpatient unless the find something in the more in-depth workup. So either they end of going home after 23 hrs or they go to the floor.

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Specializes in ER, ICU.

a typical patient might be in for chest pain with no findings awaiting treadmill in AM, or stable appy for surgery the next day. Good luck.

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Specializes in Surgical Critical Care.

Thank you! I greatly appreciate it!

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Ill be working at a CDU as a newgrad, what nursing tasks should I expect?

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Specializes in Cardiac.

The CDU at my hospital is new and they don't have set standards to pt population quite yet.....I think it's a great idea, tho!

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Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.

The hospital I work at has a CDU. The rooms are located on the med/surg floor, specific rooms set aside for the CDU patients. The only real difference we have seen is that a) they have vitals q4h, and b) they are more needy.

Oh, and we get stuck having some CDU patients and some reg med/surg tele patients. So, basically, I am running into the CDU room every 30minutes or so explaining to the patient that "no, I can't give you a sandwich plate because you are NPO" or "No, I am not calling the hospitalist aga(who I had called 5 minutes before) to get your pain meds changed from morphine to dilaudid because you are allergic to morphine (which you just discovered, after having received 4mg in the ED, and had NO reactions what so ever). And NO I am not calling him because your pain didn't go from a 6 to a 0. Mainly because the man in the next room has SIRS and I really need to get to him because I probably have to send him to the unit. His lips are blue and so are his fingers.

What is worse is when we have no regular beds left but we have 5 or 6 CDU beds left but can't use them, even though we have patient in the ED who need the beds. They just have to wait in the ED until the am, so the hospitalist can discharge some patients.

The CDU can be a good thing, I don't deny that. However, it needs to be consistent with the specific reason, not just "oh let's put the patient in observation to see if s/he stops puking"

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