New grad PICU nurse - learning tools?

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Hello everyone! This is my first post EVER, and I hope to gain some valuable insight from the vast years of experience from the community here.

I am a new grad BSN, RN, and am a couple months into my first job as a PICU nurse! I really enjoy it so far - ups and downs, challenges and wins together.

My question is: Does anyone have suggestions for books/guides/texts that would be good Pediatric/PICU resources to read to brush up and build my knowledge base? I don't have my Pediatrics textbooks from school anymore, and think that would be a bit dry to sit and read anyway.

ANY suggestions and insight would be greatly appreciated!

~Kim

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Hi and welcome! I think it's awesome that my 10,000th allnurses post should be in this forum, the area of nursing I've spent more than 20 years at. Your question isn't that easy to answer though. PICUs cover quite a range of services offered (or not offered) and without knowing what services your PICU provides, anything too far beyond the basic won't be helpful. And like you say, textbooks are REALLY dry, even with a big coffee chaser. If I may be so bold, I might suggest this forum as a resource! The forum has a broad range of topics with some really good discussion. For critical care basics I found a free pdf file of Critical Care Nursing Made Incredibly Easy just by running a Google search. There are pediatric pearls that temper the information provided in that kind of resource, but really, a lot of it is pretty universal. A solid understanding of things like hemodynamics, mechanical ventilation and pharmacology will be very helpful. I hope you love your PICU career!

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Specializes in SRNA.

The educators in our PICU really recommend "Manual of Pediatric Critical Care." Mary Fran Hazinski is the author. It's a great reference if you need refreshers on the patho behind certain disease processes.

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1) for quick down & dirty critical care concepts- Life In the Fast Lane's Critical Care Compendium has great overviews, just take it with a grain of salt b/c it is adult focused

2) for peds specific critical care- ditto on the Mary Fran Hazinski book

3) if you can get your hands on a pediatric CCRN review book (not just a question book), reviewing it alongside your clinical cases can actually do wonders for your understanding even if you're not planning on taking the CCRN any time soon.

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Thank you for these resources!

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