Clinical skills woes.

[CardiacDork, MSN, RN]

Hey! I'm an MICU/CCU Nurse. My total nursing experience is now about 3.5 years. By the time I apply to CRNA school I'll have about 5-6 years total under my belt.

My biggest reservation is that I'll be completely inadequate at clinical skills. We rarely get the opportunity to start new PIVs on my unit. When we do, the patient turns out being extremely hypotensive and edemetous, so what ends up happening is that the senior nurses will place ultrasound guided IVs.

I do plan on becoming certified in using the ultrasound once I get all my check offs, it's harder than it looks and the opportunity to place successfull IVs on easier not so sick patients with visible veins rarely comes by ... hence you end up with failure after failure of sticking and digging with the ultrasound on people with horrendous vasculature.

We also place our own arterial lines, those opportunities are also rare and have only been able to attempt on two patients both which were crashing and hypotensive, and the charge nurse couldn't even establish arterial line and even the fellow had two failed attempts!

All in all, I hope anesthesia school provides me with enough exposure to placing lines to be successful.

[sigiris]

Don't sweat it now....you will be taught! By the sound of it you'll be ahead of the game with US experience.

[Hobberdog]

Most ICU nurses don't place many IV's and when they do, they are on really sick, edematous patients. As an SRNA you will place many, many IV's and usually after they are already asleep and have dilated veins (much easier). A-lines are taught as well. Best thing you can be doing now is to focus on the physiology of your patients and what is going on inside their bodies... i.e. what is the cause of their low blood pressure, edema, respiratory changes... etc. A great site to search is OpenAnesthesia. Just do a google search for a disease or physiology dynamic and add the word anesthesia at the end. Look for a result from Open Anesthesia. They always have some great info. I do it that way because they are a paid site, but offer free stuff as well and it is easier to find it using google than from their site directly.

Best of luck to you.

[futureSRNA1985]

That should be the least of your worries. I'd worry about getting into a program first.