EP Nurses

I am a cardiac device nurse. I took me until I was 44 to find my dream job. Better late then never, huh? EP is like learning a foreign language - very complex and abstract. I love knowing that I work with some of the best and brightest people in my facility - docs and nurses. I always feel like the dumbest person in the room, and the challenge is just awesome.

I am still considered a Cath Lab nurse however I rarely work in the lab and am practically a full time EP nurse. I really do enjoy it so much more than doing caths. The technology, skills, education, and working with so many people from the industry is so much fun.

Hello SMYSJanie! I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your job. I'm going in for an interview in my hospital's EP lab. Any tips for the interview? What type of person do you feel makes a good EP nurse? Thanks!

I'm in a dedicated EP lab and I love the intensity and intricacies of our cases. I much prefer ablations to device implants/extractions but every once in a while we get a cool device case (transposition or a persistent left). Very rewarding work. My favorite is the EPS whose been told they're crazy their whole life but they know they aren't but no one listens to them, then it turns out they have AVNRT and we have completely changed their life.

Im on a very acute cardiac stepdown and when I hit 2 years I am thinking of transferring to the EP lab. I wanted to do cath lab but I think EP is much more interesting.

Glad to see so many people enjoy it!

Hello. I currently work in a PCU and we get a mix of all types of patients and take care of some very critical patients. I was just wondering if it is possible to move to the EP lab from a PCU or if ICU experience is always needed.

Hello. I currently work in a PCU and we get a mix of all types of patients and take care of some very critical patients. I was just wondering if it is possible to move to the EP lab from a PCU or if ICU experience is always needed.

I don't know the intricacies of Nursing, or how ya'll go about transfering.

I do know what sort of expectations exist in the EP Lab however, and I don't see anything about that situation that would take away from your ability to perform in the EP lab.

If you can work with Anesthesia patients, can manage conscious sedation and are willing to learn you'll get along just fine. In fact you could almost go so far as to say that a surgical or PACU/Recovery Unit nurse would actually be the best fit for the job, as opposed to ICU.

Maybe some,experience with Ultrasound and Pacing would be a plus? Not mandatory though,

No matter how you cut it... The EP lab is going to be an entirely different experience from just about everything else in the hospital. Theres noone who can walk into an EP lab and say "Oh yeah, I can figure out how to use this equipment! Its similar to my last ward!".

Everyone entering EP should expect to be walking into an entirely different experience.. If you're excited about being involved in a new frontier of medicine. If the idea of working on largely theoretical rationale, going in to cases with literally no expectation as to what you're about to find, what tools you need or what needs to be done excites you, welcome.

If you don't necesarily mind coming to work without knowing whether you'll go home at noon or midnight, or having to manage patients without any sort of clear algorithm to follow, if all this sounds good to you; you qualify.

ALmost always trained on the job. PCU is a great start.

I have worked in the EP lab since 2002. I had worked 17 years in an open heart ICU before that. The reason I mention that is because, I felt so dumb when I started working in EP! For the first 20 years of my nursing career, I prevented people from passing out. Now we try to make people faint by doing tilt tables. I prevented people from going into VT or VF, now I induce it. I was very competent in reading chest X-rays, now I had to learn fluoro. It's a totally different world. But I love it!

Yes, understanding is the key word. I'm week 5 in an EP lab and it's a big learning curve to simply read intracardiac ekgs, let alone interpret the pathways and jumps. Most RN's are unaware that there are 2 separate pathways in the AV node!