ICU before ED?

Yes. I had ten years of ICU. It can take a long time to pick up critical care skills in the ED,, since it is not your entire focus.

I had six years of ICU experience prior to entering the ER. The experience was invaluable when treating the criticaly ill pts I encountered. It did take some major adjusting however, ie. becomming comfortable not knowing everything about each patient I was taking care of. Most of the time I was not able to give the highly one on one personal attention to the pt or the family either. Many of the ER nurses that I worked with didn't have critical care in their background but were excellent ER nurses. They had many strengths that I didn't have. They were a jack of all trades and a master of none.

I wish somtimes that I could go to the ICU for a little while and learn some of the skills that the ICU nuse are expert at. Some drugs we don't see very often in the ED, you see everyday in the ICU. Vents, and diffrent procedues we don't do very often in the ED you can get some really good experience in the ICU. Another unit I would recommend is Tele. I came from cardiac backround, and found out that ED nurses are not so great @ tele. This can be very helpfull in emergent situations.