Is progressive care unit like ICU?

[Sisig12]

Do graduate schools accept experience from PCU?

[Twinmom06, ASN, APN]

I don't know about grad school but I do know that our PCU nurses take a critical care course, and our PCU accepts pt's on one pressor (if the pt needs 2 they go to the unit), stable vented trachs (not fresh ones or ETT's), and are all ACLS certified. Also take fresh trauma's, shunts and ventricular drains, and other ICU level pts. Not sure if that helps or not.

[Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN]

Are you meaning CRNA programs, which require a minimum amount of critical care experience? I've never seen one that accepts PCU...the ones in my area specifically require adult ICU experience. That said, you can learn a ton in that environment, and is a great stepping stone TO an ICU if you're not able to get an ICU job just now.

I have floated to our stepdowns; my hospital has medical/cardiac, surgical/trauma, and burn stepdowns. Stepdown pts are very sick, make no mistake. As far as I know, ours don't take vasoactive drips except possibly NTG. They do the DKA protocol. They are on bedside cardiac monitors just like in the ICU (as opposed to tele floor, where they have a box in their gown pocket and the monitor tech watches the screen from their little closet) Our cath lab pts go directly to stepdown (except for stroke pts, because they need such frequent neuro checks that they really should be in the ICU.) Many of our traumas go to stepdown, if they are stable, don't have a lot of involvement of internal organs, don't have damage to the great vessels, don't have a head injury (need to be in the ICU for frequent neuro checks).

What you don't have is mechanical ventilation. If they're tubed or trached and on the vent, they stay in the ICU. If ICU isn't able to wean them from the vent, they go straight from ICU to an LTACH (long-term acute care hospital). And then the acute instability isn't a constant in PCU. Sure it happens, people code, etc. but it's not the every day occurance that it is in the ICU.

Plus with ICU, there's something to be said for there being no else for the pt to go. We are it. In fact when I interviewed for my job, my manager said that she liked I had previous ICU experience, because "you *get* the fact that we are it. Sure we might send someone to the OR for a few hours, but then they come back and are a crap show."