Sub acute/transitional care nursing

rehab nurse · Aug 6, 2005

i work in transitional care/rehab area....we are offsite from our host hospital and are connected to a LTC. the PMR docs from the hosp also do rounds at our site. our pts are all elderly, usually falls with fractures of something (hips) or with bad OA needing knee replacements. we also get the occasional pt who needs only IV abt for a specified amount of time. we also get a ton of cardiac pts, we have a well known CHF program. we can get some very sick pts sometimes.

our unit is a mix of RN/LPN and they pretty much are interchangable positions where i work. we are always in contact with the nurse managers from our host hospital (combined med/surg and tele as well as inpatient rehab) and we are always told our experience on transitional care is counted as med/surg experience if we ever decide to go to the hospital to work (of course they only hire RN's though...but a lot of our LPNs are in school to get their RN). a lot of our nurses have gone on to work there and they say it is not much different.

as i have never worked in that hospital, i can only state what opinions were voiced to me. i really enjoy our transitional care unit...i learn new things all the time. though when i finish school, i will move on as well.

duh..i just reread your question.....i would say the only thing that differs between our LTC and our transitional care is the acuity of the patient and the alertness. most our our LTC residents are in final stages of dementia, whereas our rehab pts usually do not have dementia or it is very mild. of course our rehab pts are short term, get a few weeks of therapy and go back to their previous living arrangements. the nurses on long term do get more residents (20 per nurse on afternoons), and on our unit we only have 8 or 9. our unit is very very busy with IV's, doctors constantly in and out on rounds, tons of orders, pts going to therapy several times a day, usually 2 to 3 discharges, and 2 to 3 admissions daily (sometimes more), along with the usual tasks of passing your meds and treatments. i hope this helps you...