ICU to CRNA

[poppy07]

I'm working ICU, love the challenge, and am considering CRNA down the road.

Working as a CRNA, how are your job responsibilities similar to that experienced in ICU? Also, what from your job experience has best prepared you? (eg. working with pressors, etc.) I'm working in a combined medical surgical ICU; we even get neuro patients. We rarely see Swan's (I have yet to see one in this unit), and, on occasion, get have pts with a Vigileo monitor.

[gasmaster]

Getting as much exposure as possible to hemodynamics, gtts, vents, etc. will help u a lot. However, u really need to shadow a CRNA to understand what it's all about. It is COMPLETELY different from being an ICU nurse. In fact, when I interviewed at TCU, they asked me specifically how I would be able to handle going from knowing drug effects, hemodynamics, etc. in the unit and going into the OR where the same drugs have different effects, different hemodynamics are expected, etc. because being a 15 year ICU veteran they had to make sure I could deal with going back to square one with my knowledge base. They said that often seasoned ICU nurses don't realize that everything is different and get stuck with the knowledge they carry from the ICU & so can't make the transition to CRNA.

[deepz]

This concerns your question directly, poppy

http://www.gaspasser.com/unique.html

and you can find much info among the sticky links to other anesthesia websites.

[poppy07]

That link was really perfect! Thank you : )