Responsibilities of the RN in cardiac clinic?

[catechin]

Hello all,

I am a nursing student and I just found out I will be completing my final capstone/preceptorship in a cardiopulmonary clinic. I have not received any information yet on what the scope of responsibilities for the student/RN are in this setting. My friends have been telling me it could be anything from a doctor's office/clinic setting, a more rehab type setting where we will be doing stress tests, ekg, echos, and exercises.

I would really like to prepare the best I can for this, but I can't seem to find much online. I also tried to search the hospital website to see if the dept. was listed, but it was not.

If anyone has any tips or info to point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it!

[jvojnurse76]

You sound eager to be prepared, that's good! You are right, this clinic may be a lot of things from stress testing to care of heart failure patients to managing patients with devices like pacemakers and ICDs. I worked in a cardiopulmonary department at a hospital and we saw both inpatients and outpatients. You could look up on their website what cardiac services the hospital offers in general. Like do they perform open heart and/or angioplasties there?

My suggestion is to bone up on your heart anatomy and physiology so when they start talking to you about ventricles and bundle branch blocks you will have some idea of what they mean. You could also read the patient pamphlets on the American Heart Association site that will give you a basic idea of the types of medical problems the clinic helps to manage. Other than that just go in with a thirst to learn as much as you can and you will succeed!

[catechin]

Thank you! This is really helpful. It sounds super interesting and the more I read about it the more excited I get. Yes, this department is located in a major hospital - ICU/CCU, interventional radiology, open heart, the whole shebang.

Do you think this will be a good stepping stone for a student who wants to someday work in cardiac? Or would it have been better if I went straight to med/surg or tele?