PICU nurse "traveling" to CTICU

[21strawberry]

Hi fellow nurses...I am starting my first travel assignment in a CTICU after 3.5 years of PICU nursing. I was told it's primarily a surgical ICU, and I should mention it's also peds. Any words of wisdom other than brushing up on my cardiac notes? My PICU had few true cardiac patients because the hospital had its own CICU. Thank you in advance for your responses!

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

Is this a pediatric cardiac ICU you are traveling to? If so your question would be better answered in the PICU forum as peds cicu sees congenital issues which are very different from adult cardiac problems. Adult cardiac notes won't help you except for giving you normal anatomy - which most of our patients in the peds cicu do not have. What questions do you have? I work in a peds cicu. Since you work peds you already understand age variations in vitals but for cardiac you need to know defect specific variations, for example many patients will have a normal sat of 75% and that's ok, we might even worry if their sat is too high but these are all defect specific and you might want to brush up on common defects. As a traveler you probably won't have many fresh complicated post-ops but you should still know the variations in vitals. Also common arrythmias in these kiddos: JET, SVT, bradycardia, v-tach are the most common ones but we do see others.

[21strawberry]

umcRN, I will be going to a peds CICU...I should've specified. I appreciate your response. I suppose I don't have specific questions just yet. I start this week so I may be back to follow up. I didn't realize the cardiac section of the critical forum was adults...oops!

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

The best advice I can give you is to make sure you get your patients normals from the off going nurse and if you are unsure of anything ask. This is a great resource for defects: Home Page | Congenital Heart Disease - Cove Point Foundation | Johns Hopkins Children's Hospital

[21strawberry]

I appreciate you taking the time to answer, umc...thank you!

[Azariahjoe]

Guess if you stick to it professionally you will be able to get answer from it correctly because for the same thing we can get to have an idea which stays reasonable for a lot of factors and at the same time knowing the format that how we can get to make a mark in this situation is fine enough.