which ICU?

poppy,

I will start CRNA school in AUG. I worked in a SICU, drips we often used were Dopamine, Levophed, NTG, Nipride, and Vasopressin along with others but these are most common. I dont think the importance is which ones you use, it is that you learn the effects and work with titrating them, which is what you will be doing in the OR. Hope this helps.

Agree with the previous poster. Any ICU that will give you a variety of cases, vent management, experience with lots of gtts and titrating them. Typically I think you'd get great experience with all of these things in a busy trauma or SICU. GL!

I just spoke to a CRNA yesterday about this who was on an admission board for a major University and he told me that his University preferred CVICU experience over anything else. This is due to the fact that Swan's are a common thing, as well as managing bleeding and hemodynamically unstable ventilated patients.

many would suggest CVICU, i feel there are benifits and plus to working there. you definitely take care of very sick acutely ill patients post of from different CV surgeries. you will get the most experience with swans working there. however working in a large sicu, or msicu, you will see a wider variety of patients. seeing that you already work in a msicu, I say go for the CVICU, you already have your variety of patients down, if you really want to do swans go there.

all in all i dont really think it matters. in the class I will be starting with, out of the twenty something people in the starting class I think only 3 or 4 have CVICU experience.

most frequent gtts. levephed, vaso, neo, fentanyl, versed, precedex, propofol, dopamine, dobutamine. like others have said, learn the gtts and why you are using them and their effects, anyone can titrate a gtt, but knowing why and how is what counts.

http://nursing.duke.edu/modules/son_academic/index.php?id=77 I posted the link to Duke's site that lists ICUs in order of which they prefer, SICU is number one followed by MICU. I called my school during the application process and all they said was to take care of the sickest possible patients. I worked in a MSICU that cared for all kinda of pt from CABG to CVA and they seemed to be satisfied with my experience. On a side note. This past wekend I went out for a beer/burger after work with about 6 ICU nurses and the topic of CRNA school and the CVICU came up. Here in NC the CVICU at Duke requires a 2 year commitment because they loose so much of their staff to CRNA schools each year and it cost a fortune to train them. We all kinda agreed that we blame the CRNA programs for taking so many CVICU RNs and that they should set a limit on how many RNs they will take from any one ICU to avoid a negative impact on the unit. I wonder what other peoples thoughts are on this???? -Smiley