ISICU or CTICU

[Britt-RN]

Hello All,

I am a new graduate nurse with a BSN looking for some advice please!

To start, I have worked for a very large inner-city hospital as a Patient Care Technician for a little over a year now. I honestly love my job, but know that I only got the position because one of my family members also works here. This situation is very common at this facility. Over the past year, I have definitely proved myself as a dedicated, hard worker, who is so eager to learn. I have always wanted to go into critical care nursing, especially because I want to go back to school to become a CRNA.

I was very fortunate that after graduation and completing boards, my boss put in a good word for me to receive a RN position with this institution's nurse residency program. It took some time, but I am happy to say that I have been offered a position with this hospital on a surgical step-down unit. The only downfall that I can see so far with this unit is that the nurse:patient ratio is 1:6, which I feel is a lot for a step-down unit.

Additionally, two days before I was offered this position, I went on an interview for a Cardio Thoracic ICU at A DIFFERENT facility, which is also offered through a nurse residency program. I feel that the interview went fairly well, but I am still waiting to hear back from them (It has only been 1 week).

So my question is..Does anyone have any advice on this situation. Is it difficult to move from a step-down unit to an ICU?

I really want this ICU position, but I do not want to burn any bridges. I may be jumping the gun on this situation, but I want to have time to think about this. It is a HUGE life decision.

Thank you so much for your comments!

[thatoneguyRN]

Hi

I went CT-step down to CTICU after a year and the transition wasn't too painful. So I would say wait and see if you get the offer for the CTICU job if your current Step down job will wait. If not then I would take the job you have offered from the step-down unit and if you get an offer from the CTICU you can always back out of the current step-down job. You have to do what is best for you.

And what kind of step-down unit is it? For CT surgical step down 6:1 would be ridiculous, if its say cardiac medical not so bad. It is a tough call as I hear you about not wanting to burn bridges, but if you really want to do CTICU than I would take it if offered, but it is always good to have a back up plan ie: the step-down. Just my $.02