ICU -Med surg unit

[SN2432, RN, NP]

I accepted a position with an ICU unit and from what I cant tell its med surg with no major trauma or surgeries. can anyone tell me if they had good career path with these units. I am just hoping to get baselines experience. 

[RNperdiem, RN]

I work in a large hospital that divides up the ICU patients. Where you are going sounds like a medical ICU. 

If you are working MICU, the patients have a wide variety of medical issues, often multiple issues. You see pneumonia, liver failure, drug overdose, DKA, cystic fibrosis, and in my hospital part of MICU is a dedicated COVID isolation unit.

 

["nursy", RN]

 Yes you will learn a lot.  Medical ICU teaches two extremely important things--assessment skills and organizational skills.  WIth those, you can go anywhere and learn whatever else you need.

[0.9%NormalSarah, BSN, RN]

I work in an MICU and sometimes it feels like a step down unit. However, one thing I’ve learned is to never take those stable-looking patients for granted. Just recently we had a pretty stable seeming patient that went down the tubes so fast, and this happens a lot. The MICU is so special because we get a lot of diagnoses, and most of our patients have multiple comorbidities and when they are critically ill, any or all of those systems can go haywire at once. It will be amazing experience but you may have less than exciting days, like when you have an ETOH withdrawal and a LOL with a uti. But hey that ETOH may need to be intubated, and your uti can go septic quick, so your critical assessments are...critical! When you catch something early in these patients, you will save a life!