Trauma_drama14 BSN, MSN, RN, APRN, NP

I graduated in May 2020 and am now a AGACNP down in middle Tennessee. Before my husband and I moved down here from Ohio, the FNP and ACNP positions were saturated in southwest Ohio. Only maybe 3 or 4 of us (out of my cohort of 13) had jobs set up bef...

I worked on a gen surg unit (who am I kidding, it was pretty much med surg) and a year later I transferred to my hospital's SICU. Just like Ruby Vee said, you'll learn all your ICU basics in orientation including prioritizing and time management. My ...

Like the others have said, it really depends on you. I worked on a gen surg care unit (med surg) for a year and went straight to our trauma/SICU. I didn't think it was too hard of a transition for me but who knows what my preceptor thought lol. I alr...

Wow, it seems like there is a lot of "looking down" from M/S to CC and CC to M/S. I was going to write a rant for both sides because I have worked both in the past two years, but to be honest with you I don't feel like it would relevant to say anythi...

The SICU and CC NPs who work in the hospital I work at all wear light blue surgical scrubs, and every once in awhile I see them in their white coats. The other speciality NPs I know (i.e. Cardiology, urology, etc.), they tend to wear professional clo...

Do you work days or nights? I work nights on SICU and man, it can be exhausting at times but I am SO glad that I don't work days. It can get so busy and I wouldn't feel like I was getting anything done because they expect you to do some much in 12 ho...

When I was finishing up with my preceptorship in 2014, the manager took my resume and told me to call her when I graduate if I was interested. Fortunately, I pretty much had my first job in the bag because of precepting there and befriending the work...

Maybe acute care isn't for you. Thankfully, the nice thing about nursing is that there are so many specialities and places for people to work as nurses. Have you thought about case management? (HHC, hospice, etc). If you wanted to stay in the hospita...

Theres always drama in trauma (Trauma-SICU in my case) lol!!

Honestly, you'll just know when you're ready to move to ICU. I was on a surgical care unit for a year prior to switching to SICU and I know it was the best decision I made! I understand completely, even though it was a good floor to start on as a new...

Shoot, I felt the same way. Envious with some people starting at great places. I really wanted to start at my facility's inpatient trauma unit and then transfer to SICU within a two year span. Some nurses started in trauma and I started in a surgical...

I work in SICU at a big level one trauma center. We "started" bedside reporting butI have yet to actually do it. We also explain to the patients our hourly rounding and that we are supposed to sign a piece of paper, etc. most of our patients are tube...

Weird but I can see their point in using it. In my floor, we use tap water to flush OG/NG tubes

Don't give up, you haven't even graduated yet! When I graduated in May 2014, most of our class didn't have jobs or interviews lined up until several months after passing boards. Only maybe 10 of us out of 100 had a job waiting for us. Even with that,...

Pixie, I have not but I'm sure I'll start hearing about it soon. I talked to our educator not too long ago and said it isn't a requirement for our floor... Which is very surprising. It's a requirement for our trauma advanced care unit but not the ICU...

I transferred to my hospital's Trauma/SICU in September and I love it! Trauma season is here, bring it on!

WHAT! Jesus, I would cry and curl up into the fetal position if I was at 7:1. Our unit is mostly 1:1, 1:2... on a bad night when we're short staffed can be 1:3. When we have a really bad trauma who is unstable as heck, we have them 2:1 or even 3:1 (e...

Haha I love this! Can I just go ahead and fill this out with my list? LOL! 1. Trachs, definitely trachs. I cannot handle sputum and this is why I'm not an RT. Which also kind of brings me to another point- you have a trach or are intubated? Just sto...

To be completely honest with you, it would be in best interest to definitely be able to shadow each unit to get a feel of what both units are like. It also comes down to, what unit do you see yourself working on? When I first started in 2014, I start...

I don't believe I have heard having to get rid of it within 18 hours. On our floor, 99% of any IV bags need to be discarded after the 24 hour mark. I have only heard that diprivan tubing needs changed after 12 hours.

Just curious out there... Anyone else out there who is married to a husband or a wife who is also in the medical field? My husband and I both are RNs working in the same hospital and have not met many other married couples or couples in serious relat...

Nope, we actually met outside of the hospital per mutual friends. We met when he was 6 months into telemetry and I was an LPN still. Very helpful when we started dating and I started nursing school again lol. We now both work in the same hospital (th...

I am loving these responses so far! Davey, that is pretty cool, being able to talk about two different specialties. I feel as if its nice because you can learn or re-learn from each other what you have learned in the real world and in nursing school....

The hospital I work at is a little bit different. Our ICU stepdowns are called advanced care units... So if you see for 'AC' that probably means advanced care. We have MICU (medical ICU), SICU (surgical/trauma ICU), HVICU (heart & vascular aka ca...

We did, we would practice on the mannequin amd practice in clinicals... And this was jusy two years ago.