Does experience at a Long-term Ventilation unit help with MSF application?

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Recently received an offer to work at the long-term ventilation unit, the pay is amazing with lots of benefits but I'm a bit worried that work experience on such unit isn't really gonna help with my application for MSF (hopefully in 2 years)...

Does anyone have any insights or suggestions?

A little background : peds nurse with 3 years under my belf, half in general peds and half in PICU (where I'm working for at the moment)

Specializes in PICU.

What is an MSF? What type of experience is required for MSF? What population is your long term vent population?

See if you could do a shadow experience at the unit to see if it is something you would like.

I believe it's doctors without borders. Op, I don't think many low resource countries will have that kind of medical population. So I think the usefulness of that experience will be limited.

Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

I have a friend who is now full-time with MSF. Her only clinical background is Peds ICU, however she also has an MPH. The MPH is what got her the full-time gig after 6-7 missions.

"Medicines sans Frontiers". French for "Doctors without Borders".

Medicines sans Frontiers, or Doctors without Borders

Doctors without Borders. They require applicants with a minimum of 3 years experience working a any of the following specialities (eg. peds/icu/er/or/surigcal/infectious disease/tropical/neonatal and so on..)

The unit is actually in another country which makes shadowing a bit tricky...from what the recruitment agency told me the unit is like a picu with a particularly focus on ventilation

What i'm worried about is that I'll be only looking after children with a trache and end up losing all the skills acquired from working in PICU..

thx for the insight, need to rethink whether the unit's worth joining..

thats awesome! I'm actually planning on doing a MPH as well! (plus tropical medicine), may i ask how much peds icu experience has she had?

Specializes in Pedi.
Doctors without Borders. They require applicants with a minimum of 3 years experience working a any of the following specialities (eg. peds/icu/er/or/surigcal/infectious disease/tropical/neonatal and so on..)

The unit is actually in another country which makes shadowing a bit tricky...from what the recruitment agency told me the unit is like a picu with a particularly focus on ventilation

What i'm worried about is that I'll be only looking after children with a trache and end up losing all the skills acquired from working in PICU..

Chronic trach and vent kids have all other kinds of nursing needs too. What skills are you worried about losing?

Such as looking after someone with severe infection, difficult to ventilate, electrolyte imbalance, managing an EVD, chest drains, neuroprotection, icp monitor, invasive hemo monitor, inotropes, major post-op...

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