Post-op to Critical Care

[KayceeLeeRN, BSN, RN]

Hey all....do you think a post surgical floor is a good route to critical care? Will that give me good experience under my belt? I have about one year experience on a heavy medical unit.

What are the differences of a heavy medical unit as oppose to a post op unit?

Thanks :)

[joeyzstj, LPN]

Hey all....do you think a post surgical floor is a good route to critical care? Will that give me good experience under my belt? I have about one year experience on a heavy medical unit.

What are the differences of a heavy medical unit as oppose to a post op unit?

Thanks :)

Any experience is going to help you, however critical care, as specifically a cardiac unit will require a lot of training due to the fact that most nurses from floors without telemetry units at the nurses station might not have you up to date on analyzing different arrhythmias, blocks and ECG events. Swans, vents and some of the drugs would probably be an area that you would need to take a refreasher on as well. Overall, I would venture to say that any experience you have can do nothing but help. You might check out a few books. One is called the ICU BOOK by morino and the other is something like Perioperative care in cardiac surgery by Rober Bojar. Both books give a very interesting, simple explanation of a lot of procedures, drugs and conditions and why we do what we do in critical care. If you have the drive to learn and self educate you can do most anything in medicine and in life. Good luck.

[gradcare, LPN]

What sort of ICU are you looking for? Medical / Surgical / Mixed? Once you get your stuff together on the ward environment you can make the switch. Both medical and surgical wards will provide experience that can be useful in the ICU. A CCU or telemetry rotation would also be helpful to get the basics on ECG interpretation too.