Which ICU?

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Hi everyone, I'm a new grad nurse and I currently work on a Med surg unit. I just applied to an ICU residency position and I'm torn between the Coronary Care ICU or the heart & vascular surgical ICU. We're supposed to tell them our top 3 choices & they try to accommodate. I did 112 hours of precepting on the heart and vascular unit so I know all about it and am interested, but I also heard coronary care has a lot of codes and good experience. Anybody know or have any advice?

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

If you precepted in the CVICU and liked what you saw, go for it. You will have plenty of critical patients and codes on that unit too. You will probably float to the CCU either way.

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Specializes in ER, OR, PACU, TELE, CATH LAB, OPEN HEART.

I am a Cardiac Girl all the way! However, you can learn tons in a heart and vascular ICU. Go for the most intense learning environment. A lot of codes on a unit is just repeating the same algorithms. Go for the diversity, save the repetition for later in your career.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

"A lot of codes" is not a good thing..

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Codes are easy besides as an ICU nurse you will probably go to hospital wide codes anyway. Go for the best and most diverse learning experience you can get.

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Thanks everyone. I wasn't trying to make it sound like a lot of codes are a good thing. However, I was told it's a good floor to learn from. The heart and vascular ICU is amazing. It's definitely the hospital's most highest acuity ICU. The nurses there have so much autonomy that it's actually scary, but I really think if I can get in there, why not?

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Specializes in Cardiac/Transplant ICU, Critical Care.

Granted codes are not necessarily a "good" thing since a patient's condition is deteriorating, but they can be a lot of fun, especially if you're an adrenaline junkie like myself :p. When you have gotten enough experience on the units, most days, even with very sick patients, are kind of boring :bored:. The days that I have the most fun are the ones where we have train wrecks (ECMO, Impella, Balloon Pump, Tandem, CVVH, Maxed on pressors) or rather complex codes and have some excitement! :laugh: I feel like it also good for the newer ICU nurses to experience them often and early on so that they can learn and develop sound nursing judgment and develop good habits.

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