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Worked in a high-risk 30 bed CVICU as a new grad for 3 years and am in anesthesia school now. I work with PACU nurses on a daily basis and I have never met a PACU RN who was not required to be an ICU nurse first (jobs I've generally seen posted requi...

I worked in a high-risk CVICU for 3 years, looked into a variety of insurance options. Ended up going with AACN's endorsed (and discounted for members and certified nurses) proliability (formally The Marsh Group). Looked into NSO, but I liked proliab...

Started in a high-risk cardiothoracic ICU as a new grad, did that for about 3 years (Sounds short I know, but when I left I was a vet on that unit, probably could count 20 people who started AFTER me who had left BEFORE me! High turnover...) Anyway,...

My first patient death was the summer after my junior year in nursing school when I was a Summer III intern at Mayo Clinic in one of their ICUs. The pt was in septic shock admitted from the floor, fairly young, and within 2 hours of being admitted in...

Where do I start?? Too Many... This one though has stuck with me for awhile (wasn't my pt thank God) Transferred a pt to our unit at 2300 from small outlier hosp with initial unstable angina, suspect non-ST MI which was relieved by a nitro drip (the ...

Believe me you have more than enough experience to take the exam. A lot of it is integration of clinical picture (pt signs and symptoms, swan numbers, drips) to intervention. I worked in a CVICU as a new grad for 1.5 years when I took my CSC (2 mont...

Cardiac Surgery Essentials for Critical Care Nursing (search on Amazon). It LITERALLY takes you step by step through the entire postoperative process for CV surgical patients, addresses multiple patient populations (CABG, OFCABG, Valve patients, Tran...

I feel like I had a somewhat similar experience to you (2 yrs CVICU experience when I took the CSC, (started in CV as a new grad so only experience I had), passed CCRN 2 months prior to taking CSC, and also wanted practice ?s/exam) so here's my advi...

In this situation, the physician is not acting appropriately or in the best interest of his patient. As others have posted, check your hospital's policy because most are taking a hardline stance against this kind of behavior as it does lead to more m...

Here's my take, as many of the posters have previously said, depends on your facility, Docs, and diagnosis. I work at the largest hospital in the state with the largest CVICU in the state taking the most critically sick patients. Since we put a Swan ...

I'm in as well!!! Congrats to those who got in, as well as those on the waiting list. From Minneapolis originally (in Milwaukee now) Can't wait to get back home!

Fent gtt with bolus orders on all patients, generally weaned off by morning if extubated, taking PO etc. Dilaudid while intubated Morphine 2-4mg IV q1hr Vicodin 1-2 tabs q4hr Oxycontin 5-10mg q2hr Torodol generally if pt is young, creat normal, has t...

I work in a high-risk CVICU (we do VAD, Transplant, IABP, CVVH, ECHMO etc. etc.). Machines with the exception of long-term VADs are always 1:1, though recently they've been starting to pair more fresh VADs (2-3 days out of surgery) with another patie...

I've been a nurse now for almost 2 years, like you I started out as a new grad in the highest risk cardiovascular intensive care unit in the state (What was I thinking!?!? :) I did have a summer internship at Mayo Clinic the previous summer in an IC...

A lot of nurses on our unit had no idea we had it as a system-wide policy standing order. Unfortunately now they took it off our policy orders because apparently someone thought a pt could become lidocaine toxic if say for ex they were getting it fro...

Some facilities have standing orders for this, others will require a physician order, but definitely use Urojet which is lidocaine jelly. Basically it comes prepared as a prefilled syringe that screws into the deployment device. You put the tip into ...

Thanks, your screen name is pretty clever too!

I work in a large high risk CVICU. I haven't had this issue before with MD visitors, but have definitely had this issue MANY times with family members/friends of family who are nurses, physical therapists etc. etc. Like your situation, these family m...

I work in a 30 bed CVICU, largest CV unit in Wisconsin that takes the highest risk patients in the state. We see IABP A LOT (I'll be trained in March, can't wait!) Our training is 1 8 hr class. When ppl are newer at machines (CVVH, IABP, LVAD) or are...

In my unit (30 bed CVICU, largest in the state, and takes the highest risk pt's of the state) we use CVVH A LOT. We use the NxStage Machine (Which I hate by the way, had way less issues when we used Prisma in the past) ICU nurses control all aspects ...

I work in a Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. We use vasopressin ALL THE TIME. Our surgeons hate levo and phenylephrine (and there's research that suggests pt's having low endogenous vasopressin levels after bypass) Our max dose range is 0.1 units...

My second code I was part of at my summer internship in the med/surg ICU. It was the last day of my internship, i happened to stay late that day for a 16 hour shift to help out due to short staffing (working more as a nursing assistant, stocking room...

I'm an RN in a very large CVICU and we D/C IJ Cordis all the time. I agree with everyone else that you should always have pt lying flat as tolerated for just about any central line removal, esp an IJ. You'll likely be protected if your policy says yo...

Sounds like you did a great job. I work in CVICU so we use nipride all the time for the immediate post-op period. Nipride is a great drug but can be tricky to find the right amount the pt needs. When we're titrating all the time for it we call it "...