ECMO in the CVICU

Nurses Safety

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I work in an 8 bed CVICU, I wanted to know if anyone else has any experience with patients on ECMO and who is responsible for managing it and if it is the nursing staff what training is provided???

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Specializes in ED,CVICU,MICU, SRNA.

At my hospital the perfusionist are responsible for ECMO. They stay at the bedside 24 hours a day. (Actually they are just running a bypass machine!) I do know that at a hospital about 1 hour away their nurses run the ECMO machine, but they have been doing ECMO a lot longer than we have. They have a 2 or 3 day training course before taking care of the patient.

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.

Our CVICU has little experience with ECMO - only 2 patients in the last 2 years I've worked as an NP there. However, our transplant director is trying to initiate a program where all ICU attendings, mid-level providers, and staff nurses will be trained and our roles in this process will be more defined. The last 2 patients we had on ECMO had a perfusionist present at the bedside 24 hours/day. The RN did not have anything to do with the ECMO equipment at all.

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Specializes in Adult/ped/neonatal/ICU/Trauma ER nurse.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ecmo+training+for+nurses&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Read this training courses before you ever do it alone.

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Specializes in ICU, ER, EP,.

Ours has perfusion at the bedside 24/7 as well, they are a great resource. Our hospital/ posible state does not allow RN to use echmo.

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