New Cardiac Nurse wanting info

[STFXNurse]

Hello,

I have been hired onto a medical cardiology floor that has telemetry units and I am a new nurse, just out 5 months now. Are there any books/reasources anyone could reccomend that I get, to help me in caring for cardiac patients? I am trying to find a book, relatively easy to understand, on EKG interpretation and cardiac disrrythmias.

Any suggestions or tips would be so helpful, thanks alot !

[marygirl]

books on EKG dysrhythmias can be confusing because interpretation is only that: interpretation. Does the tele unit have a training guide for your hospital? On our tele unit, everyone goes to DIM: dysrhthmia interpretation and management and we used the book: Guide to ECG Analysis by Joseph T. Catalano in the class. It is fairly thorough but in nursing school and in our practice, we don't count PVC's in the rate and in Catalano's book, PVC's and PAC's are counted in the ventricular rate. Now if the PVC is occasional, it really doesn't make much clinical difference whether you count it or not, but if the patient is having bigeminal PVC's then it makes a huge difference. No matter what book you use, there will be some discrepancy between how "everyone" does it and how the book tells you to interpret. Good luck and you can get the Catalano book used at Amazon for less than $10.

[TennRN2004]

The Incredibly Easy series gives good info, just the basics in simple easy to understand format. They have topics like critical care, lab values, ekg, assessment, etc. You can find the series at any bookstore chain-barnes and noble, books a million. Also, you can find in these bookstores the medical/nursing section and get flip books that have references to what type of MI has what area of st elevation, basic rythms, etc. Have you taken ACLS yet? The ACLS course will also give you the option to buy a small flip book with information on the drugs used for arrythmias and what they arrythmias look like.