Observe in neuro, surgical or cardiac ICU?

[KNV2729]

I'm a 3rd semester nursing student and our instructor is giving us the option of doing our observation in surgical icu, cardiac icu, or neuro icu. My question is, which of these would be the best experience to observe?

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

It'll depend on what's going on that day, what the census is for the unit for that day....is it ONE day? Or a rotation of a few days?

Can't guess if it's going to be busy or dead, so hard to say. Cardiac and Neuro are obviously specific; "surgical" could be anything. I suppose if you have a particular interest in ortho, or general surgery, you ought to stick with surgical ICU, as that's where you'll find that. Otherwise....where are your interests?

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

I used to tell my students that if they strove to have a good understanding of hearts and lungs they'd be better off wherever they ended up, because if somebody doesn't have a heart or lungs, they're dead and we don't have to take care of them anymore.

That said, though, RNsRWe is right-- it's a crapshoot as to what's happening on any given day. So I guess I'd take a surg ICU, because 1) all those people have hearts and lungs in various states of usefulness, and 2) there's a lot of other stuff in the mix to observe and ask questions about, too.