What does "medical and intermediate unit" mean?

[EmiRN]

Hi everyone. I'm a new grad RN with my BSN. I'm applying for a nurse residency program and the position posted says "Clinical Units accepting New Grad Nurses: Medical and Intermediate Units". Later in the requirements it asks for a cover letter in which you describe the units you'd most prefer to be hired on. I dont want to write a whole cover letter about units that don't fall under the umbrella of "medical and intermediate units" but I also don't know what units fall under this umbrella term.

Anyone know what this means?

The hospital is Dartmouth Hitchcock in New Hampshire if that helps.

[cynmrn]

Medical floor usually encompasses medical-surgical and possibly post-surgical unit (we get a lot of overflow medical patients on our PSU). Intermediate care unit is usually referring to a step-down unit for patients who need closer monitoring, sometimes with telemetry/critical drips/etc. I work in a smaller hospital, and before combining, we just had one medical care unit and one intermediate care unit. Hope that helps.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Medical is usually med/surg. Intermediate is usually a monitored unit where patients are placed after leaving ICU but not ready for the floors....or need closer monitoring like a chest pain. The nurse patient ratios are usually lower on these floors. Dartmouth is a great facility.

[anh06005, MSN, APRN, NP]

As PP's said medical likely means a more general med-surg type unit. Intermediate likely means step-down (higher acuity than med-surg but lower acuity than ICU).

I worked on a cardiac/stepdown unit as a new grad enjoyed it. Our patients were sicker and often required drips that couldn't be done anywhere else except ICU (dopamine, amiodarone, insulin, dobutamine, cardizem, lidocaine, etc.). We also got med-surg patients who were just more fragile and required more monitoring. We were required to do assessments every 4 hours and had a nurse/patient ratio of 1:4 on days, 1:5 on nights. Our unit did have some BiPap machines but no ventilators.

Technicalities will vary from hospital to hospital but intermediate is probably a good place to start as you get a taste of med-surg and ICU (unless you know you won't want to care for the more critical patients). If you're on the fence of which way to go, though, intermediate is a good stepping stone.

Just my opinion anyway....which isn't worth much in the grand scheme of things lol

Good luck

Edited: typo and to add about vents

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

our medical uit is strictly that, for adults only. We have a separate surgical unit. The intermediate care generally involves telemetry and may include post-ops, cardiac patients - depending on what other units the hospital has. Basically they are telling you these are not critical care units, like ER and ICU