Specialty question

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I had a question about available specialties as my background is mainly Cardiac Intervention (active MI, cath + stents both cardiac and peripheral, problematic arrythmias, carotid stenting etc.). Do these units exist in the military? Is there a cath lab/team?

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Specializes in Trauma/ER.

There are cath teams/ cath labs at some of the larger military hospitals, not all though.

The Army has several BSN specialties and several Masters level specialties. They include OR, ICU, ER, Public Health, OB/GYN, CRNA, Midwife CNM, Administration, NP

I am sure the list is longer but I can not think of them at this time.

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I'm at one of those larger Army MEDCENs and we do have a cardiac cath lab however, to the best of my knowledge, it's staffed completely by civilian nurses.

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Specializes in Anesthesia.

What you have to consider is that your civilian experience doesn't carry over very well to the military. There aren't going to be that many active duty persons that are going to need cardiac monitoring/interventions, so most of the time these services will either be contracted out to the civilian sector or have contractors doing most of the nursing care.

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Well i'm a little disappointed because cardiac has always been the most interesting to me, but who knows what the future holds.

Always been interested in psych, NICU, and underwater basket-weaving.

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Specializes in ICU, ER, OR, FNP.

The truth is that we just don’t have the volume to support such a specialty. If you have worked in a specialty vascular setting for some time, you’ve seen that there are two types of interventional cardiologists; one who can place a stent in a mosquito’s diag – and one who wouldn’t thread a catheter in a garden hose.

The consolidation of military CABGs in San Antonio is a great example. We just can’t onzie twozie big vascular cases and expect good outcomes. Consequently, we consolidate big cases so everyone gets exposed to more and more. Better outcomes magically pop up when everyone does the job day-in and day-out. Doing one PTCA a week places everyone at risk (PT, tech, MD, RN, etc).

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you've seen that there are two types of interventional cardiologists; one who can place a stent in a mosquito's diag - and one who wouldn't thread a catheter in a garden hose.

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Hilarious! And yet true :)

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