New Cardiac Cath Lab

Huh......i hope your organization is willing to pay for the training. You can probably contact American College of Cardiovascular Nurses, or you can contact a big hospital with a large Cath lab for education training. which part of the country are you? Do you have a CV surgery team on stand by 24/7? Or how are you going to deal with diagnostic caths that code in the lab or perforate needing stat surgery or ecmo?

I am in a pretty big medical center and i remember we were to train our sister hospital to open a Cath lab, but the chief canceled the whole thing because they didn't offer a CV surgery team on stand by.

We are going to larger sister Hosp for training once weekly but were told that's gonna stop, as far as complications, no vascular surgeon and any complications would be life flighted to sister Hosp takes 15 - 20 min....do you see my concerns? Only doing 4-6 "low risk" caths a week. I will ck out that site, thanks.

We are mid west, and no cardiovascular team.

I would be concerned that I was putting my nursing license on the line, you may want to reconsider working there, or "run Forest run!!!"

I would also suggest you look in to your state nurse practice act rules and regulations. What its defined as Prudent nurse as well as, if you are eventually supposed to do everything as in assist in procedure then that would make you "first nurse assist" which has different requirements and training our approval, which its the reason why they use cv techs. I have to say its alot of liability for you as a nurse. I would definitely consult someone in your state that's good in nurse liability issues. Am sorry it is a tough position and hopefully you find a solution.

Ok thanks for the input definitely have some thinking to do!

No the RNs are not going to scrub just circulate, monitor and pre and post cath nursing, thanks for your input and we will be "learning "at the bigger sister hospital. Thanks a bunch!

Sadie47....unfortunately when ...ish hits the fan you are expected to do a whole lot than just monitor mostly because your interventional cardiologist will be too busy trying to put in a temporary pacemaker or IABP, or intubating the patient, trust me from a seasoned Cath lab ....these patients go into tamponade, code, perforate get PEs right infront of you. If you work in Cath lab there are certain standards that you have to be proficient in. Just like if you work in CVICU you are responsible of having the knowledge to pace, monitor iabp and titrate vasopressors, monitor ventilators and know the complications....

More hospitals are adding cardiac cath labs, because cardiac procedures are high profit. It is good that they let you work at the sister hospital. When we opened up the cath lab and CVICU we had to learn trial by fire.

ugh. I don't think ANY cardiac caths are "low risk". I work in a peds CVICU and while their hearts are obviously much smaller, it only takes a fraction of a tenth of a centimeter to perf a ventricle, atria or aorta...and I've seen it happen. Perfed aorta, attempted patch via cath, emergent chest cracking, deploy to ecmo, run to OR, chest exploration, kiddo ultimately herniated and died.

It might only happen once in a thousand cases but when it does it's going to happen big and bad and then someone will come investigating on why there is a cath lab in a hospital without a stand by CV surgery team...a 15 minute transfer ain't gona cut it, your patient is dead before you can get them on a stretcher.