Why Critical Care?

There was a position open at the hospital I worked as a tech in and I took it.

I like knowing my patients, and I work well under stressful conditions. I am also pretty good at showing compassion but emotionally detaching myself from the situation, which is a great combo for critical care. I am also impatient enough that I like seeing immediate results from my actions - and I feel like you get that in critical care more than in med/surg.

I also like to know what's going on inside of my patient accurately - the thought of taking care of someone that's not on tele and that I'm not checking hourly I/Os on freaks me out a bit. If the patient has no monitor on and their blood pressure is only being monitored every four hours (if that often), I feel like life-threatening things could be missed pretty easily!

Besides, I couldn't do six or more awake and alert patients banging on the call bell all day... I'd lose my mind.

I'm UK based. My reasons for working here? I like the combination of being able to nurse my patient and interpret what's going on with the monitoring and so on, I prefer the staffing ratio in this environment compared to the wards, I like my machines that go beep and ping.

many critical care nurses are a bit of control freaks. We hover, titrate, monitor and track everything. It is somehow comforting tracking and controlling everything on 1-2 patients than just slightly following many patients. I can tap into my OCD and use the powers for good. LOL

I'm UK based. My reasons for working here? I like the combination of being able to nurse my patient and interpret what's going on with the monitoring and so on, I prefer the staffing ratio in this environment compared to the wards, I like my machines that go beep and ping.

Like this one?

I initially got into it b/c I wanted to be a CRNA. Now I don't want to be a CRNA because I LOVE being an ICU nurse!! :) FWIW I had 6 hours of critical care in my ADN program, so just a little more than you did. Basically we shadowed the RN...I think I suctioned the intubated pt once.

The reasons that I like it are 1.) I'm a control freak. 2.) I love to know everything that's going on with my patient, and with the ratios on the floor that's just not possible. 3.) I like being able to help someone in their most desperate situation. 4.) We have very collegial relationships with the MDs; I feel like they respect us and our input into the pt's situation more than they did on the floor (this is based on experience w/ our neurosurg service at another job, working w/ the same docs on the floor and in the ICU. Also according to float pool nurses at my job who might do a shift in the ICU one day and a shift on the floor the next day.)

Like this one?

Brilliant

And I still hear that machine that goes "bing" in my head three hours later, well after I've left the hospital and am trying to settle in for some day sleep.