Interview for cardiac rehab job!

lee1 · Sep 5, 2012

Congratulations, hope that you get the job you want. Cardiac Rehab pts run the gamut of all types of cardiovascular disease plus the risk factors that go along with this. Your job will probably be helping with telemetry monitoring and education of the patients. Some places also have you go see inpatients to do PR and risk factor modification especially for post MI. Some places that do open heart have you do PT type exercise also.

evathediva · Sep 5, 2012

Hi Gorgenurse! I hope you got the job! I was wondering how the first interview went? ALso I wanted to know what kinds of questions did they ask you and what type of educationa and experience do you have to land this job!? :)

echoRNC711, BSN · Sep 27, 2012

Having worked in cardiac rehab staff is much smaller so they will look for flexibility to cover on sick calls. Some facilities are off site of the hospital with Dr coverage only of EKG monitored pts. You may be the only nurse on during non monitored classes and will need to be able to handle emergencies. There is a very big focus on education.Patients are there for 3mths usually,non monitored pt for several yrs so you need to be personable. For a lot of patients who live alone you become "family " to them. Often this extended to staff visiting these pt if they were hospitalized elsewhere . One fantastic think is you actually get time to teach like you were taught in nursing school (meds/preventative care/pychosocial /explaining surgeries they had ).Bottom line you need to be a really good team player,its a small staff . It is so much more relaxed than a hospital but you need to have strong assmt. skills to catch a problem before it becomes an emergency. I personally do not recommend anyone without cardiac experience to begin here (handling an emergency as the only medical professional can be challenging) The best thing about rehab is pt improve so much it's fantastic to watch. Very uplifting. I am not sure if this is true of all cardiac health centers but my experience has been that it is the happiest I have ever seen both staff and patients. Lastly you sometimes are expected to to do community teaching or participate in research. Our center offers also reiki, massage,psychotherapy. tai chi,yoga, zumba , acupuncture & weight mgmt,so find out if the center you are applying to provides any of these services and read up on them ahead of time. The very best of luck.