Move from Medsurg to ICU?

[CafeduMonde4Breakfast]

I am thinking about moving from medsurg to ICU after 9 months of a small, slow night shift women's care medsurg, and one year of a slamming, stuff them in, shot out of a rocket every day progressive care medsurg unit.

I took courses introducing PCU nurses to ICU material to further education for step downs. The material made me thirsty for new things. And then a more experienced charge nurse told me the other day that my reports are so detailed yet focused, it makes it easy for people to know exactly how to care for a patient. I told her I wasn't sure I was ready, but she said she thought I was. I like the idea of cardiovascular or trauma ICU.

So I have two questions: what makes someone ready? And other than the obvious, what differentiates trauma and cardiovascular ICU populations?

[sjalv]

Your ICU can take other ICU patients primarily because nurses in other ICUs are not given competency on CVICU devices not because CVICU is some special snowflake unit.

Did he say that his unit was a 'special snowflake' unit? Is your passive aggressive assumption warranted, or does it contribute anything to the discussion?

[Trauma_drama14, BSN, MSN, RN, APRN, NP]

Like the others have said, it really depends on you. I worked on a gen surg care unit (med surg) for a year and went straight to our trauma/SICU. I didn't think it was too hard of a transition for me but who knows what my preceptor thought lol. I already knew almost all of the surgeons,trauma surgeons, and residents so it was kind of helpful too. It was mostly a different patient population I was used to but it worked out for me. And the ICUs just really vary depending the hospital you work for. My hubs and I work at the sane hospital and he works on CVICU and I work SICU and let me tell you, they are so different. I find it even funnier that the nurses on each unit hate to float to the other (most SICU nurses hate floating to CV and a good amount of CV nurses hate floating to us).