Starting my critical care rotation

[hockey24]

Good day everyone,

I am starting my final year of nursing school on Monday Sept. 15th, and will be completing my critical care rotation. I am a little nervous about this rotation and would appreciate any and all advice. I have done well in my previous rotations, but critical care appears as if it could be a bit overwhelming, so please hit me with that advice.

I did obtain my ACLS certification even though it was not required so if I was observing a code I would have a greater understanding what was involved in these situations.

Thank you and hope everyone has a great day

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

I enjoyed the ICU rotations far better than the Med/Surg rotations. The ICU nurses only have 2 patients and have more time for teaching opportunities.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

I enjoyed my ICU rotation for two reasons: I only had to deal with (at most) two patients and there was a lot going on. The whole rotation was a great learning experience as the patient acuity is higher. Having your ACLS card is certainly a good thing, I doubt you'll be allowed to actually participate much in a code unless you end up doing compressions. There's very few experiences like it and if you're the first person to do compressions on a patient, that's a very different experience from even just rotating in.

I speak from experience on this as I've done my share of codes, all prehospital...

During your rotation, you'll still do your assessments and such the same basic way that you do them on a Med/Surg floor, just more frequently. You'll do vitals more frequently. You may pass meds more (or less) frequently depending upon the orders and your program's limitations put on you. You'll certainly be around more "equipment" that support the patient than you've ever likely been around but once you know their basic function/reason for being there, it's not (hopefully) too overwhelming.

One of the more interesting things I got to do was set up a CVP monitoring set, connect it, and zero it. Very interesting stuff... Just go in with an open mind and if you have questions, ask. I'm sure the nurses there will help when they have time.

[smf0903]

Exciting isn't it! I start my CC clinicals on Friday. I am doing a MICU preceptorship, and I am so looking forward to it! I am happy to be getting the opportunity to see all of those things that I haven't gotten to see yet. While I haven't done ACLS yet, I did do a sim course a year ago which did one day just on codes, and I learned a LOT from it (I highly doubt to the extent of actually going through certification! LOL But I understand much more about the process/reasonings than I would have without the class.) I've been looking things up and trying to refresh on some things before I start. Good luck to you! :)

[Hodgepodge]

If you know thats what you're interested it should be awesome. I did my capstone in critical care and such a great experience. I recommend you start reading up on your vents and watch as many youtube videos as you can until you start to understand them a bit more. Also ask your preceptor about everything. The biggest thing for me in critical care was knowing what we were doing with our pt. and why we were doing it for our pt. This goes for meds, labs, procedures, anything really. Like I said though, if you like the critical part of nursing, you will love it.