Leaning Critical Care

[Ayra]

I'm a senior nursing student about to graduate with my BSN. I've been doing my capstone in an ICU, and it looks like I have a good chance of getting a job in a progressive step down unit when I graduate, with the plan to move back into the ICU after I have some work experience (the director says in about a year she could probably hire me in the ICU).

In the meantime, I'd like to dive more in depth into my critical care knowledge, so that my baseline patho is more secure. In my critical care class, it seems like we only scrape the surface of what actually goes on in the ICU, so I am wondering if any of you guys have any suggestions on good critical care books that would help me get an in depth of patho we see in the ICU and typical procedures (like how you decide how to titrate your drips type of things, or how to effectively run CRRT)

I feel like I have a good baseline knowledge, but even for the step down unit, I'd like to have some educational supports above and beyond preceptorship!

[MikeRNWI]

If you want to get some good information (especially patho stuff) on critical care, look into some of the CCRN study books. CCRN is the Certification for Critical Care Nurses. Depending on your learning style, there are a bunch of good books. I'm studying for my CCRN right now, and I am using PassCCRN since it has a nice outline format as well as a CD of questions.

Much of specific things such as "effectively" running CRRT (can be quite a tricky thing to learn even when you know what you are doing) and titrating drips is something that is best learned hands on, but having the background knowledge of how things work is vitally important to understand! It is great to want to learn as much as possible when you are dealing with such sick patients!

Another source would be The ICU Book by Paul Marino, it is geared towards docs so it may be above what you are currently looking for but it has a lot of pretty good info related to pathophys and pharm stuff as well as various diseases and their treatments seen in the ICU.

[Ayra]

Thank you! That is a good idea to look into CCRN..I'd like to get that eventually, but right now I'm just trying to get a good foundation! I just don't really like my advanced medsurg book I have right now. For one, it's huge..as it was for both basic medsurg and now advanced, and two, it's outdated so a lot of the equipment and procedural stuff doesn't really apply. I also saw a little flip book that I though might be nice to carry around with me a bit.

[CrufflerJJ, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

One book that I like is "The ICU Book" (catchy name, eh wot??), by Paul L. Marino. Lots & lots of useful info.

Good luck!