Icu Or Ed Nurses Make Better Flight Nurses?

Medic946RN · Aug 11, 2004

Just wanted to hear from the veteran flight nurses out there. I just read an article that stated that ICU experience is prefered. I have only ED/Trauma experience, do I need to become an ICU nurse?

Depends on the service and their primary type of call. If your flight team does mainly 911 scene response, ED or Paramedic experience is going to help your best. If they are doing primarily interfacility high risk transports then they might prefer ICU over ED

qanik · Aug 12, 2004

Most programs require 5 years of combined ED/ICU experience. I agree with the previous post as it really depends on your program. Some programs are real scene heavy and ED experience and as stated Pre-hospital experinece will help you greatly. My current program is 90% interhospital with the majority sick ICU patients (IABP, VADS with swans and multiple meds as well as vents) so ICU is very important for our program. I have to tell you the ideal candidate would have both ED and ICU and have pre-hospital experience. Good luck

Qanik

MellowOne · Aug 22, 2004

Just wanted to hear from the veteran flight nurses out there. I just read an article that stated that ICU experience is prefered. I have only ED/Trauma experience, do I need to become an ICU nurse?

As a pretty new flight nurse, here's my view:

Every nurse that enters flight nursing comes with strengths and weaknesses. I have significant ICU experience, but not much trauma and almost no peds. I fly with nurses and paramedics who have alot of ER and trauma experience, but not much ICU. I find that we complement each other very nicely. I'm learning alot working with them. We all bring our strenths and experience to the table.

The main thing is to take your experience to the field, understand your weaknesses, and do what you need to do to strengthen yourself in these areas.

Be well...

The Mellow One

FlyingSquirrel · Mar 9, 2005

As others have said, it depends on the type of program and type of calls you primarily take.

However, all things being equal, if you work for the "typical" program that flies with a nurse and a paramedic, and does a good mix of scene calls and interfacilities, I'd say ICU experience is definitely more valuable for the flight nurse to have.

A good mix of ICU, ED, and prehospital experience is ideal, of course....

CraigB-RN, MSN, RN · Mar 12, 2005

It's not as simple as ER or ICU. It's whereever you can get the best clinical experience were you are. Over thepast 25 years, I've worked in ER's that wree so busy that the nurses never really got to perform much in the way of clinical decision making. And I've worked in ICU's that were only there because the Docs didn't trust the floor staff with their patients. The ICU was a MS unit with 1/2 nurse patient ratios. Real sick patients were all shipped out.

The previous poster said it best. The ideal is a mix of ICU, RN, and Prehospital. Don't be in such a hurry to get that flight position. It's not that you can't do it, it's about being the best. In my last flight position, we did mostly interfaclilty transports. When we showed up to the small rural hospitals, sometimes as small as 15 beds, the doc's would say the patients is all you's and we'd have to pretty much do all the work to stabalize and prep for transport. This meant everything from large lines, to Chest Tubes, to foloy's, ext. We did the RSI even the Traches as needed, recomend to the MD that the patient might need to get some abx on board. "hm did you notice the pt's K was 9.5, don't you think we should do something about that?" Hmm sounds like an ACNP to me. :) I couldn't have gotten the experince I need in one place. I worked a combination of SICU, and ER and prehosptial. I did commute 2 hours just so I could say I worked in the SICU at Johns Hopkins.

Look at your experince, what's available in your area, and what the primary function of the flight service is. I'm not a beliver in a person being an EMT-P and RN at the same time, I think you can only be one or the other, but in some places going through an EMT-P program is the only way to get the prehosptial experience.

take Care