What is a cardiac nurse?

[NorthGAstudent]

I am doing a presentation in my nursing class in a week. I have been trying to look up information online about cardiac nurses and what they do, but the articles I found did not give me very good information. Please could anyone give me details about the tasks that cardiac nurses perform at work. Any information would be great!! Thank you for your help.

[Dinith88]

Depends on who you ask. In my opinion, a true 'cardiac' nurse would be one who works on a unit dedicated to cardiac patients. (in general, as every unit's going to get pt's who dont quite fit the mold)

So, these units would be:

CICU/CVICU (cardiac/cardiovascular ICU)

CIMCU/CVIMCU (cardiac step-down/cardiovascular step-down)

CCU (coronary care unit: kind of a hybrid/marriage of the above)

ICU (hospitals w/only one 'general' ICU deal with LOTS of cardiac-type patients...so these nurses are usually (should be!) good at cardiac type stuff

Other, more 'specialized' departments that could be considered 'cardiac' are below.. Although these nurses don't deal with the entire 'spectrum' of cardiac care, they are aces(or should be!) in their cardiac 'segment'.

Cath-Lab (angiography)

EP-lab (electrophysiology)

CV-outpatient (outpatient drips and outpatient angio's)

This being said, any nurse who works on a telemetry unit, deals with mi/chf-type patients can consider themselves a 'cardiac' nurse, although med-telemetry units are more 'generalized' and usually have a wider array of pt types (at least in my experience).

[CCU NRS]

Hey I have a paper I wrote on everything the new CCU nurse has to do in the first year if you would like a copy I could send it to you. I am working until 1900 and I am central time zone. I don't know when you are writing youre paper but pm if you want me to send it and tell me where to send it to.

I don't have acces to it here at work...let me know