MICU patient population

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Out of curiosity, what kind of patients are seen in MICU? Most common diagnosis?

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

any medical diagnosis that has the patient unstable. DKA, a lot of COPD/respiratory, some Detox, SI/overdose. anything that really doesn't fit in the other ICU's available....some CVA's

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Everything other services won't touch. Post cardiac arrest but not qualifying for hypothermia and the CICU is full, hyponatremia with cerebral edema but neuro is full...you name it. Lots and lots of asthma/COPD exacerbations, DKA, pneumonia/ARDS, liver failure, boatloads of GI bleeds, ESRD with and without continuous dialysis, hypothermic patients needing to be rewarmed, pulmonary hypertension, drug overdoses, angioedema...I could sit here all night and type this list really.

It gets a bad rap for seeing a lot of the same stuff, but I don't think you could ask for a better ICU to work in. You literally see everything, and learn every specialty. Not to knock CICU or anything; we definitely didn't get ECMO patients and God knows I have no idea what I'm doing with those patients. You definitely got some other cardiac cases like a-fib on Cardizem because it's just too easy to handle compared to the CICU who is more capable of handling the tougher cardiac patients.

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Specializes in ICU.

Lately I've had a huge run of DKAs and detoxes, but it's definitely flu season and it's getting cold, so I'm expecting COPD and pneumonia to take over as the #1 offenders soon. There isn't a neuro ICU, surgical ICU, or PICU where I work, so we get all of the strokes who receive TPA, post-surgical patients, and anyone under 18 sick enough to be in the ICU for any reason. We see a lot of variety.

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Specializes in MICU.

Everyone's pretty much said it all. Also kind of depends on what other ICUs your hospital has. Where I work there is a cvicu and surgical/trauma. We get lots and lots of septic pts, ranging from "why is this pt even in icu" to full blown sepsis/DIC/CRRT/vented pts.

I don't want to repeat the lists of pts that everyone has already mentioned. It is very good experience. You will also get the random off the wall very interesting pts too. We occasionally get pregnant and postpartums (thankfully L&D nurses come to check on them).

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Heavy GI bleeds, ARDS, exacerbation CHF/COPD, and DKA. Progression to Septic shock, organ failure, from the aforementioned population.

Exciting therapies now for ARDS and Sepsis. More patients surviving these critical illnesses.

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