Is an LTAC Hospital good for a graduate nurse?

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Hello,

I am a recent graduate from a second degree program were I obtained my BSN :) I also have a BS in Business Administration as well. The market for new nurses is extremely tough in the Philadelphia area and I am interviewing with a LTAC facility next week. I am interested in working in Critical Care and thought that if I were offered this position I would learn a lot and be able to transfer to any ICU within some of the big hospitals down town.

Is an LTAC hospital a good place for a graduate nurse who wants to specialize in Critical Care? I didn't learn much about LTAC's in nursing school and wanted to ask experienced nurses what they thought about this....

I would appreciate any help/ suggestions/ feedback

Thanks!

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Specializes in LTC, Hospice, Case Management.

You may not get a good response in this forum. This is a long term care forum & usually we don't have anything in common with a long term ACUTE care facilities.

Sorry, good luck

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I recently discovered the LTAC specialty, from what i understand it is much like a rehab or trauma floor at a hospital. Being Acute care i would think you'd come across acute patients who need to be in-patients longer. I feel it is not a great start for someone who wants to end up in critical care, but it is good enough place to practice a lot of your nursing skills.

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Thank you for your opinion, I appreciate it! I want to specialize in critical care and it's really difficult right now in the Philadelphia area for a new nurse to get into. I was hoping that I could spend a little over a year learning valuable skills that I could transfer into a hospital ICU floor.....

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Specializes in LTC, ER, ICU,.

i would say yes if the one you are interviewing for is like the one i worked.

we had a variety of patients and those patients were intubated, had trachs, drips [titrate] many different lines [hickman, picc, etc,] drew our own blood, keep our codes on our floor instead of a transfer to the hospital's based units among many things i have not named.

the disadvantage, 4 patients each on a "good" day and have had up to 7 when there was a call-in. the cn would help tremendously [depending on who the charge was].

wound nurse, therapy and resp was part of the team, too.

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Love-A-Nurse

Thank you for replying to my message, I really appreciate it. This LTAC does have a variety of patients who are intubated with trachs, they do have cardiac drips that need to be titrated (but they have a room that holds 4 patients together who are on these drips), Hickman, DobHoff, Piccs, etc. and we also draw our own blood too!

So the skills I would learn are amazing! However, it is a ratio of 7:1... each RN has 1 CNA... sometimes we can get 8 patients but the DON said she likes to keep it at 7:1... which scares me! I am afraid that the ratio is to high for patients who are so complex and don't want to risk my license or the care of one of my patients because I have too much on my plate..... Is a 7:1 ratio normal?

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Specializes in LTC, ER, ICU,.

my stars! the normal ratio is 7:1? okay, this is pitiful. we normally had 4:1 and this was risky. the times we had 7, it was not safe, period.

even a seasoned nurse would run. i did. yes, you will learn a lot, but...

how long is the orientation and how your preceptor responds to new orientees will be a couple of the deciding factors among others things.

let us know your decision.

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Wonderful place to start. You don't get extensive training though so you have to be honest about your skill set.

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