Coumadin Nurse

misswoosie · Aug 4, 2011

Is anyone a coumadin nurse? If so can you share your likes/dislikes about the position as well as a description of your daily duties?

Funny- I came on looking for some info regarding anticoagulation services and saw your post.

I was an anticoagulation clinical nurse specialist in the UK for 3 yes.

What I liked;

The autonomy

Getting to know a group of patients and managing their anticoag thru good times and bad times ie cancer treatment , pregnancy, surgery , med changes etc

Working in very specialized area of nursing

Helping the medical staff on the floors with problem cases ( we were located in the hospital)

Patient education and advice- often about things other than anticoag

What I didn't like

The workload- there were 4 FTEs and we managed 800 pts , the majority of whom were elderly and some housebound

Some of the younger patients would binge drink and then miss doses on purpose to try and prevent their INR going too high, or not turn up for clinic.

Friday afternoon clinics were a nightmare as there would undoubtedly be a new patient whose starting regime had been messed up by the dr starting the coumadin and then a high result would come through the labs for a patient out in the community who you had to try and contact for admission for reversal , only they were deaf and couldn't hear the phone and NOK wasn't contactable!

We were given FRiday afternoon slots for our clinics as none of the consultants wanted to do clinics then!

Cardiologists would often start patients that were totally unsuitable or , as patients got older, they would become unsuitable candidates but no one wanted to stop their coumadin even though the potential risks outweighed the benefits!