day in the life of a tele/cardiac (not cvicu) nurse?

Tarabara · Aug 26, 2016

I work on a tele unit and we mostly have patients who come in through the ED for chest pain and require work up- trending trops, stress tests, or angiograms and we prep and recover post angiogram (post op vitals, checking groin/radial sites). Or for heart failure and require diuresing. Or for arrhythmias that require cardioversions, med drips (diltiazem), or devices like ICDs/pacemakers and we prep and recover those post as well. We also take care of patients who are being worked up for possible heart transplants/LVADs.

Wrench Party · Sep 3, 2016

My cardiology unit sees: non-tritated pressor drips, lots of Lasix, lots of heparin, chest painers from the ED, CHF exacerbations, 2nd and 3rd degree heart blocks that get pacers/ICDs, losts of post-caths, newest addition are mitral flaps, TAVRs/TVARs and more vascular patients, chronic VAD issues.

pepino23 · Oct 20, 2016

My unit is Cardiac PCU and we receive most of our patients directly from the cath lab, ER, and transfers out of the MICU. We prep and recover patients with cardiac caths, ablations, (including pulling the sheaths) pacemaker/ICDs. We have plenty of CHF exacerbations, patients in for sotolol and tikosyn loading. We have heart blocks and do arrythmia management. We prep patients for CABG, valve replacements, pericardial windows, TAVRs, but post op after they are out of the ICU they going to Surgical PCU. Drips on my floor that we can titrate nitro, diltiazem,amiodarone, cardene, primacor. We also do heparin and lasix drips. I've had dobutamine as well but we can only titrate so much before they have to go to ICU. We have a monitor tech who sits on the unit watching the tele monitors and then at each nurses station we have our tele monitors. We have a pharmacist who does a lot of teaching with patients with warfarin, xarelto, eliquis, sotolol, tikosyn, etc. Cardiac rehab nurses do education with the post MIs and CHF coordinator does care rounds with those patients. 33 bed unit so we have 4 patients unless you are the chosen one that day who gets 5. Very high turn over for patients. It is normal to have 3/4 or all of your patients gone and with new ones by the end of shift.