rn6889

I have been a nurse for almost a year now and currently work on a Progressive Care Unit. We receive transfers from the ICU, admits from the ER, and MET/Rapid Responses from the floors. We get chronic vent dependent patients, patients on cardiac gtts such as cardizem and amio, insulin gtts, heparin gtts, sandostatin gtts and we can also take patients on low doses of inotropes (we do not titrate anything except insulin and heparin per pharmacy protocol) we do take ICU overflow when the unit is full so all the nurses on my unit are trained to take the patients if need be. I got 4 months of orientation and have no seen many ICU patient, actually only 2 which one was on levo and the other on a propafol gtt. I recently got hired at a large inner city hospital in the CTICU and was told the orientation would be 8 weeks and i would do 1 week on days and the next 7 on nights which i was hired for. I would also be expected to take hearts out of the OR if they happened to roll out on night shift. Is only having 8 weeks of orientaion in a CTICU with my experience normal? I am ACLS certified and have taken the ECCO (essentials of critical care orientation) critical care course. Thanks for the input!