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Discussion

Progressive Care Unit?

Hey Everyone--

This may be a silly question for most of you.. I'm a student and I just applied for a nurses aide position at my local hospital. The unit that I applied to is a "progressive care unit"... is that just like a med/surg floor? (I really don't know) If you could fill me in that would be great, thank you in advance! :heartbeat

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    • Featured Replies

    Here, PCU is considered a level of care between ICU and a regular Med/Surg floor, like a step-down floor.

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    The setup of the place looks a lot like an ICU.

    The patients will be on cardiac monitors and need lots of vital signs. The nurse-patient ratio is around 1:3. For many patients, it is where they stay after they leave the ICU and before they move out to the floors.

    There is a lot of patient turnover in these units, so be prepared to assist with transport to the floors.

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    • Expert

    It is a transitional way station. Patients are coming and going between the ICU and the regular medical units. They are either being evaluated to see if they are sick enough to belong in the ICU or if they are getting well enough that they can finally be transferred to a regular medical floor. When I worked these units we often got a lot of admissions from the ER because the ICU beds were full. We had telemetry and a lot of unstable, sick patients. We had more Code Blues than the regular medical units. We had a lot of respiratory patients on ventilators, strokes and GI bleeders. There was a separate stepdown unit (PCU) for the cardiac patients so we didn't get the people with chest pain and congestive heart failure.

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    On our PCU, there's lots of trachs, lots of unresponsive patients, and everyone is on continuous cardiac monitoring. The nurse patient ratio is 1:2 like an ICU. Most of them are total care patients. Its really a pretty enjoyable area to work in.

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    WOW,

    I am a new grad working PCU/Tele and our ratio is 5/1! It is extremely overwhelming for me, even though I worked this floor as a student. I would love the 2/1 or even 3/1 ratios mentioned above.

    We are also VERY fast paced, no vents but do have bi-pap and c-pap as well as lots of drips. We are full feed, that is our patients come from ICU, CCU, Neuro ICU, ED, transfer from Med/Surg when they start declining, or are direct admit, so I see it all, Ortho, GI, Pulmonary, Infectious Dz, you name it, although I much prefer the cardiac patients.

    I found this floor a wonderful training grounds for life as an RN, when the nurses I was working with when I was a tech found out I was in school, they often pulled me in to see stuff that was neat and offered their wisdom, which I will always be grateful for. The diversity of conditions that I saw on the floor helped me tremendously on NCLEX because I was exposed to so many different conditions.

    Best of luck, and I hope you get and enjoy the job.

    Always Learning

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