What do you do exactly?

I work both outpatient endoscopy and hospital GI Lab. In the outpatient we do 36 cases a day run two rooms. You need assessment skills, computer skills, and really good IV skills. The nurse does sedation for gi cases we assist in the procedure with polyp retrieval and biopsies and we take down dirty scopes and hang clean scopes and we also clean scopes. If we get a sick call then you are usually alone in the room to hook up patient, put patient data in the computer, sedate patient, do biopsies, snare, inject, cautery, and retrieve polyps along with abdominal pressure when needed then chart all of this and taking down the scope and hanging the new one. Turn over of nurses is frequent in the outpatient clinic because patients are scheduled every 30 minutes and when you are short a nurse you need to pick up the slack. Good part about out patient clinic no call or weekend shifts. We do 4 ten hour shifts.

In in the hospital we do all sedation procedures. We transport patient from rooms to GI then admit sedate recover and return to room, We doEGD's Colonoscopies, ERCP's bronchoscopies, bonemarrow biopsies, Monometries and ph studies and we do all radiology cases like liver bx mylograms, lung biopsies and abdominal biopsies. We do all outpatient IV's and most of the inpatients need IV that come from the floors. I find the floor nurses hope we place all new sites when they come to GI. The disadvantage of hospital is evening and weekend call. Lots of Call

Thank you for writing! I called about applying for a position in my area but they wanted recent conscious sedation practice and/or recent GI experience. I am a reentry nurse so I don't have either :-( I worked in the ICU/CCU and cardiac rehab but have been off the "floors" for 10 years. Guess I'll have to work my way back to be able to transfer.

love hugs and prayers

Carol

Do you find 4 10 hour shifts w/ no weekends less physically demanding than 3 12 hour shifts of a floor nurse? Are you on your feet for most of the 10 hours like floor nurses? I am trying to transition into a less physically demanding position thank bedside nursing? How can I obtain experience in conscious sedation? From what I have been reading, endoscopy nursing deals with a great deal of GI problems and procedures. Can you suggest a way that I can obtain knowledge aAND EXPERIENCE before applying for such a position.

I have not seen any job postings that "are willing to train".

Thanks a bunch!