acute care and ICU the same?

Nurses General Nursing

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I want to get become an advanced practice nurse, and am looking at attending loyola when I get enough clinical experience. The program I am interested in is an ACNP. I need to have 2000 hours in the specialty area I want to practice in with my msn. so If I work in the ICU, this is just another name for critical care or acute care or am I wrong?

Acute Care and ICU are not the same. Acute care would include generally any nursing unit in the hospital that takes care of acute illness or acute decompensation of a chronic illness. So, while ICU is acute care it does not mean that acute care is ICU only.

Specializes in acute care med/surg, LTC, orthopedics.

ICU is higher acuity than acute care.

Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Critical Care.

Mean Dragon is correct

Acute care basically means hospital setting...most hospital units. The patients are acutely ill and require acute care. Critical Care, ICU whatever you would like to call it, is part of acute care. But so is med/surg, labor and delivery, Direct Observation Unit, Emergency Room, NICU, Pediatrics, etc.

Long term refers more to nursing homes, rehabilitation, etc. Where the patients are there for a long time, and not typically acutely ill requiring a higher level of services.

I believe Acute Care Nurse Practitioner typically is for those who want to be NPs within an emergency room setting. I believe it can vary some, but that is what these programs target.

The only exception to that is the now growing numbers of facilities that are going from LTC to LTAC. Many hospitals are creating their own stand alone LTAC facilities. These pts are acutely ill for 25 + days and are typically on vents or have an out of control infection. The traditional LTCs are not equipped or staffed well enough to deal with acutely ill but long term pts that are being sent their way. 30 pts with a few trachs and vents is not safe for one nurse but that is whats happening. The LTACs are able to have 4 or 5 of similiar acuity to one nurse. The original term for acute in hospital meant a short but severe illness where the person was stable. The ICUs were meant for those who were acutely ill but not stable enough to be on units with higher nurse to pt ratios. All the lines are getting blurred now depending on who has an open bed.

You should contact the school about their specific requirements. For example: University of Maryland's CRNA program requires at least 2 years of "acute care", but though many hospital services would be considered acute to some, U of M will only accept SICU, CCU, etc. ER's, OR's, etc. are NOT acceptable for their program. It's just a suggestion, I would hate for someone to spend that amount of time trying to gain clinical experience that isn't qualified for the program they are interested in.

Typically, an ACNP works in an ICU/ER/trauma type setting.

At Loyola, I believe you need 2,000 hours experience as a RN in any setting and you need recent work experience in an ICU/ER type setting.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I will check with that school as suggested because I work on an Med/surg unit and was planning on being there at least 2 years before trying to get into ICU or the ER.

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