ICU to Floor?

MomRN0913 · Jan 25, 2011

And yes, we get tripled in ICU on occasion, even if your triple is a code blue comming down from my old tele floor at 5 its better any day of the week!

I've been tripled many a times in this sense......

tee_byrd, BSN, RN · Jan 25, 2011

As an ICU nurse its very hard and challaging to have one patient at times because they are more critical than the floor pts. I'm not saying that Floor nurses has it easy because I cant imagine having 5 walking talking patients coming to me every 5 minutes for something. I guess we all have our different

views on floor vs ICU nursing

Caffeine_IV · Jan 25, 2011

When ICU nurses float to my floor they always tell me how glad they are to be in the ICU. They would trade whatever 3-4pts they have on my floor for one patient with 5 drips and other time consuming things they have to manage.

I find that they are very strong nurses but in a different way. They are used to knowing EVERYTHING about their 1-2 patients and being able to basically organize their shift.

You can organize to an extent on the floor but you have to be ready for the variety of monkey wrenches that will be thrown in.

You can't get detailed like that on the floor and get everything you need done.

We are lucky if we can pass our meds on time and listen to the heart and lungs.

The interruptions and challenges for the floor and ICU are just different.

I've not met any nurse that came from any other floor to MY floor besides floating.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jan 25, 2011

i have seen people go from icu to the floor successfully -- the key is to understand that the work flow is different. one of our icu nurses years ago got pregnant and announced that she wasn't going to take care of sick patients, isolation patients, patients that needed flouro, patients with procedures that required her to stand . . . in short order she was involuntarily transferred out of icu to the telemetry floor. surprisingly she loved it, and is still there 30 years later.

another icu nurse who was in her early 60s announced that she could no longer take the stress of the icu and transferred to the floor. i didn't think she'd last, but being anal was never her issue so she did just fine.

and many of our orientees who don't make it in the icu end up transferring to the floor and doing well. often, after a couple of years of floor experience, they try icu again and do better.

jerrylundergard · Jan 25, 2011

As an ICU nurse its very hard and challaging to have one patient at times because they are more critical than the floor pts. I'm not saying that Floor nurses has it easy because I cant imagine having 5 walking talking patients coming to me every 5 minutes for something. I guess we all have our different
views on floor vs ICU nursing

Some problems here. First, only place I know of with 5 pts is California. We do 6-8 here in florida. Second, I dont recall EVER having all my tele pts being walky talky. A normal breakdown for my old floor would be 3 total cares and 3 walky talkys. The walky talkys were ALWAYS high risk fall pts. Third, ICU pts might on the whole be more critical but dont kid yourself, all those codes and rapid responses in hospitals are coming from the floors. The floors are basically just holding tanks for codes. Often, my pts up on tele looked worse than my ICU pts. Drips, vent, propofol= smooth sailing. On the floor you got a dude with HH 7 on dialysis and bp of 200/100 and have to accomplish the same mission using po or iv push meds.

I currently fit the description of ICU to Floor cause I work in CVICU full time and do tele per diem at another hospital. Im an ICU noob of 6 months and once I hit my year experience and qualify for ICU perdiem I hope to never do tele again.

So Ive done tele to Icu to Tele. I think if a ICU RN was doing tele for money or cause they had to they would need to plan on taking 3-6 months to learn the speed. Some people just never get the speed and they are the ones finishing their tele shifts at 1030 everyday!

shoegalRN, RN · Jan 25, 2011

Some problems here. First, only place I know of with 5 pts is California. We do 6-8 here in florida. Second, I dont recall EVER having all my tele pts being walky talky. A normal breakdown for my old floor would be 3 total cares and 3 walky talkys. The walky talkys were ALWAYS high risk fall pts. Third, ICU pts might on the whole be more critical but dont kid yourself, all those codes and rapid responses in hospitals are coming from the floors. The floors are basically just holding tanks for codes. Often, my pts up on tele looked worse than my ICU pts. Drips, vent, propofol= smooth sailing. On the floor you got a dude with HH 7 on dialysis and bp of 200/100 and have to accomplish the same mission using po or iv push meds.
I currently fit the description of ICU to Floor cause I work in CVICU full time and do tele per diem at another hospital. Im an ICU noob of 6 months and once I hit my year experience and qualify for ICU perdiem I hope to never do tele again.
So Ive done tele to Icu to Tele. I think if a ICU RN was doing tele for money or cause they had to they would need to plan on taking 3-6 months to learn the speed. Some people just never get the speed and they are the ones finishing their tele shifts at 1030 everyday!

I totally agree with the bolded. At my hospital, our Stepdown unit had the most Rapid Responses called in the hospital out of ALL the other units. Our pts were one step away from being a rapid response majority of the time. Alot of our pts were on drips (at a set rate, no titrate) and Bipap. Alot of them were trainwrecks waiting to happen. Either they came from ER that way, or they were transferred from ICU because they were no longer on a pressor or a vent, so off the Stepdown they go. Less than 24 hours, they are being transferred back to ICU to go back on the vent or the pressor, or both.

We got some critical pts on our Stepdown unit and then you have to juggle that patient with the 2-3 other ones you have.