New to CVICU

Hello!

I am a newly licensed nurse and just got offered a job in the CVICU. I have had prior ICU experience but wondering if their is anything I could do to help myself in this unit. Does anyone have any good books or classes that I could take or things that I should study prior to my first day? I'm really excited to start and I want to make sure that I am prepared in my first day. Any advice from CVICU nurse would be great!

Thanks

I am a (cticu) cardio-thoracic icu nurse and its very important to understand hemodynamics. Cvp, map, cardiac output and cardiac indexes, measuring via Swan ganz cath. Hope that helps a little.

I just got a job offer for the CVICU! I graduate from nursing school in 4.5 weeks! I did my preceptorship on this CVICU and loved it. My preceptor taught me soooo much, but let me be as autofocus as safely possible.

I would love to hear the information here too!!!!!

I've been on CVICU taking fresh hearts for about 5 months now and there is a lot to learn! I at least had CCU experience so I was familar with IABPs and therapeutic hypothermia, etc. A book my preceptor gave me is called Manual of Perioperative Care in Adult Cardiac Surgery by Robert M. Bojar. It's written by a CT surgeon and has a ton of good info. There are a lot of CV surgery books on amazon too, but this is the only one I've read. Brush up on your basic hemodynamic interpretations, acls, vasoactive gtts, receptor sites (alpha, beta1, beta2, etc). And be ready to ask a million questions!

Ask tons of questions! I always ask my orientees what their background is and what kind of patients they have taken so far in orientation, and what kinds of patients or skills they want to work on... it gives me a gauge of where they are on the learning curve. If they need to work on time management then we take stable doubles (a skill you probably already have coming from ICU). If they want more practice titrating gtts or learning hemodynamics, we'll take a post-op or a more unstable patient or even a stable double but we'll make sure one of the patients is there with a leave-in swan for monitoring. You won't learn it all at once so discuss with your preceptors what you feel comfortable with already and what you still need to work on and go from there... and ask lot of questions.

If you have an "easy" assignment then ask to go over PA cath waveforms or the rationale for choosing certain vasoactive gtts... make a round on the unit and see what's going on with the more unstable patients or check out the chart or a patient who is now stable but coded or was a fresh post-op a couple days ago... or the patient who has been on the unit for three months. Be nosy. And did I mention ask a lot of questions? If your brain hurts when you go home from information overload, you did a good job. With time, more and more of it will stick as some of it repeats itself.