PICU: PALS, ACLS or Both?

[Vicki_RN]

Quick question for all PICU's. Are the nurses in your PICU required to have PALS, ACLS, none, or both? Thanks!

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

also, atleast at the childrens hospital I am a patient at there are patients like me. 19 years old or older (some are in there 30s 40s or 50s) because they have been a patient there their whole lives. and at my age ACLS would be more helpful then PALS.

[PICURN04]

In the two local children's hospitals in my area, both PALS and ACLS are required, but the hospital does not pay for them so you have to pay the fees up front.

[Semele]

In our PICU we are only required to have PALS and our manager is very good about scheduling time off for the course and we take it in house and get paid to do so. We are not required to have ACLS and so I have never had it...I think this is a grave mistake, as we get adult sized kids and young adults..and even the odd regular old adult who had no other bed so we had to take them.

Just this weekend we had one of our beloved patients who had grown up on the floor in our unit because we all work right thre together and the docs are comfy with us. She was 21 and end stage and it was an emotional time of not knowing whether the family would want the chemical code after all. We were getting prepared as the heart rate fell and even discussed drawing up the Epi. LOL! Thank goodness an adult icu nurse had floated down...she laughed at us and reminded us we can just use the whole vial. So there was no drawing up things ahead of time necessary.

We didn't end up doing any meds in that situation bu it was a real eye opener about the necessity of ACLS in our unit and I plan to bring it up with our educator.

[picucrn]

:w00t:In my facility pals is required for all areas that care for kids. We also require APLS for all peds critical care (picu, ed) and encourage for all other pediatric areas.