JGTB

Quite a few of my colleagues have taken this course and really enjoyed it. I hear the sim lab is pretty great too and the instructors are excellent. (I took the critical care course through Mohawk College and that was fairly decent too)

You would need to check your hospital's policy on oxygen administration. At my hospital for instance, on the rehab floor a physicians order is needed while in surgery/medicine there are medical directives that cover the order. Obviously if it was an emergency you would do what you need to do but technically you need to follow the policy of the institution.

I work in a community hospital ICU and I applied after working a year in general surgery. I found that in order to even get an interview I had to start a critical care course on my own initiative and at my own expense (through distance ed. so it wasn't that bad). So if you can afford to do this it might be a way to get your foot in the door (especially if you don't have a lot of seniority).

In our hospital (ONA), pretty much all of the full time staff (non specialty like OR/PACU/Endo/Day surg) work 2 days, 2 nights, 5 days off (12 hour shifts).

There is variety among the different hospitals in Ontario and one of the factors to consider is if you work in an ONA hospital or not....take a look at the "collective agreement" and the "local provisions" for your hospital if you do and it outlines how you get paid (e.g. time and a half if you work the actual holiday, Lieu days if you work 8 hour shifts, DDNN rotation usually have "H" days which are 8 hour days of pay which you can slot into your pay schedule.) But you should ask the people you work with because there can be a lot of differences and they can show you the ropes to make sure you get paid correctly. Hope this helps a bit!:)

I have a story, that of course happened on a full moon night shift in our MICU. It was around 2am and we received a patient with an extensive psych history who was admitted in with a medication overdose but was actually relatively stable medically speaking. She was starting to become very agitated and combative down in ER so she came up with full restraints (we'll leave the ethics for another post J ). During report while the nurses were just outside the room, she somehow was able to get out of her restraints very quietly- Houdini style, pull out her IV (luckily her only invasive line) and make a run for the doors. She happened to pass by a poster for an October benefit concert that had the title, "howl at the moon" and so she ran through our ICU, doing just that...howling at the top of her lungs. Luckily most of our patients were sedated and vented at the time but a few of the conscious patients were obviously frightened hearing some woman howling and running down the hallway, of course dripping blood from her peripheral IV site. As luck would have it, she didn't make it out of the unit and she ran into the break room where two nurses were "resting" with the lights out. Needless to say, these nurses were very surprised to have some patient throw open the doors, howling and yelling with a crowd of nurses in hot pursuit! The look on their faces was priceless! The patient grabbed my co-worker's coffee and starting drinking it and one nurse had the unfortunate luck of bringing her purse with her and the patient grabbed it and started rifling through it. We finally managed to calm her down and bring her back to her room after calling in some serious psych support. Obviously, this had the potential to escalate into a violent situation but it didn't, so looking back I can definitely see the humor in the situation! We won't be putting any more posters up on the wall any time soon that's for sure!

I took the Critical Care Certificate through Mohawk College in Hamilton (distance ed. format). I was working full time in a med/surg ICU and was able to complete 1-2 modules a term. Two a term was a little heavy but it was a pretty good course and fairly flexible. I don't know about the clinical placement aspect of the course though because I "challenged" them because I was already working in an ICU and was exempt from them...