Potential interest

Hello!

I was a cardiac nurse on a busy cardiothoracic PCU at a major university hospital system for a year and a half. I guess it depends on what exact floor you transition to; my last hospital had 4 telemetry floors, but 1 was a lung/thoracic specialty unit, 2 were general "tele-surg" floors, and the floor I was on specialized in cardiac surgery/heart transplants/LVADs/heart failure.

I call it "tele-surg" because these patients were like typical med-surg patients that were admitted for general conditions that required cardiac monitoring, and med-surg nurses weren't tele certified. These patients were CP'ers, syncope work-ups, HTN, etc. When I floated to those floors I felt like I was providing pretty general nursing care but with the skill of reading/interpretting EKGs. Patient ratio on those floors are usually 5:1

Nursing care on a highly specialized cardiac unit like the one I was on is verryyyy different. You'll be caring for pre and post-op transplants, CABGs, pacemaker placements, caths; you'll care for patients in CHF exacerbation; you may occasionally get overflow from those 'tele-surg' floors. You'll need to familiarize yourself with the common gtts used on that kind of floor: amio, nicardipine, primacor, dobutamine, lasix, bumex, just to name a few. We printed tele strips every 4 hours. The ratio on my floor was supposed to be 3:1 but occasionally we'd be flexed up to 4.

It sounds like you have experience in med-surg and trauma med-surg, so you'd be a good candidate to transition into cardiac! I started as a new grad (after teching on that floor for a year), and it was such an intense learning experience.