bramsey934

I certainly would want more staff in the room other than the gastroenterologist and a Doctor (who has never teched or performed a colonoscopy) in the room. More power to you if you choose no sedation, but often people change their minds halfway through and we (the procedure RNs) will give a little versed to take the edge off. We often remove polyps with "hot snares" which is more than just "opening" and "closing". It isn't something I would want a first time random MD trying on me. Not to mention if something starts to bleed and the gastroenterologist wants to use clips to stop the bleeding. Your other MD is going to be getting those and trying to learn to use that. All the while who is paying attention to you? One set of eyes are on this bleed planning on how to stop it and one trying to figure out how the clip works! Our techs and procedure RNs are a vital part of the team, not just the MDs!!

Just curious who sedates the patient in the Endo procedure room if they come from a critical floor?

I work for an Endoscopy unit in a hospital. Which means we are on call for emergency cases. We use conscious sedation (versed/fentanyl) given by endoscopy procedure RNs and when we use propofol it is given by CRNAs. Just curious how other endoscopy units handle their "travel" cases. When you go to the ICU/CCU or ER who sedates the patient? Currently we are sedating ICU patients--working on getting that changed to ICU RN sedating the patient when the pt is not already sedated.

First off, I will say that you will get people who say that you shouldn't work in a specialty place for your first job. That being said, I was hired onto a hospital Endoscopy Unit a year and a half ago. We do mostly outpatients that are too sick to be done in the office and inpatients. I'm still there and I LOVE it. Most of my fellow graduates have quit their first jobs already. I will admit you do lose a lot of nursing skills in Endo---but I still love it. I currently just do prep and recovery soon to start sedating for procedures (moderate sedation). I wanted to get a good feel of all the things that could go wrong in a procedure before doing them. I love doing IVs on every patient in prep, there is nothing like getting an IV on the "impossible" patient. Recovering is nice as well. Usually about 30 minutes per case. In prep we are 1:1 with the patients. Recovery is usually 1:2 but could be more on a busy day. It's nice because you can really talk to patients and family but if you have a bad egg you aren't stuck with them 12 hours. You will meet lots of different people. GI docs are pretty easy going as well. At our facility we do capsule endoscopy, manometry, Colonoscopies, EGDs/ endoscopic ultrasound, broncoscopies, flex sigs and ERCPs. I love my hours I work, 4 10 hours and we do take call--$$$$$. I love Endo and I'm not leaving!! Hope that helps you at all!

1. North Carolina 2. Endoscopy 3. About to be one year! 4. 22.13/hr 5. Yes. Call pay, shift diff, weekend diff. 6. No