What are the duties of nurses in a CC unit?

Answer 1

Cardiac Care (CC) units (or CICU's -- Cardiac Intensive Care Units) are there because severe cardiac patients need special care and observation. Often, the majority of your census wil be post-op patients recovering, or patients in guarded (or worse) condition. Both of these require very close monitoring. Unlike most other wards, a CC Nurse who is assigned a patient will usually have only the one or two patients to monitor. This is determined by patient acuity. As the patients are often unconscious, meds are usually administered IV, and the number of lines and meds can be staggering. In situations like this, if problems with the patient start, things can happen very rapidly, and it's all you can do it handle one patient at a time. In fact, sometimes the Charge Nurse (the only one who might not be assigned a patient) will assist by handling charging, liasson with other wards, etc. Therefore, a CC nurse's job is to constantly monitor the vitals of her patient(s), and start a response to any clinical change in the patients condition. Most CC nurses I've asked seem to really enjoy CC, CICU and Cardiac Rehab a lot. Answer-- some more imput regarding this type of job. There are many duties that a nurse will provide to produce excellent patient care. * Triage -- this is where the nurse will take in your info when you arrive at a department, and they will categorize or prioritize according to the severity, and the complications of a particular injury or ailment. Some people may be taken in first, if the problems are high risk of spreading, or if the injury or illness is very severe such as uncontrolled bleeding, unexplained rashes, unexplained vomiting etc. * Establish IVs or other medical devices -- this is when the nurse will establish the system that goes into your hand, arm, leg, or other parts for medications, and also for fluids to keep you hydrated * Follow the doctor's orders -- this is where the nurse has to follow the doctors orders that have been left and update the doctors with new suggestions, or ideas of patient care. This may include coordinating tests such as blood, diagnostic imaging, biopsies etc. * Dispense Medications -- medications come in many different formats such as by mouth, by skin, through your IV, by inhaling, rectally, and many other types of suspensions. * Inserts catheters -- this is where they insert catheters when someone can not go to the washroom themselves, or if something has got to drain properly. * Provide Emotional and Physical Support to Patients and their families -- this is EXTREMELY important as the patients are in a very vulnerable state, and the families are not too far behind them with being very fearful of how things will turn out. * Transferring -- when a patient needs to go from bed to a chair or a wheelchair, and then a wheel chair to a shower, or wheelchair to bed etc. Many days, especially in today's society, nurses have the contraption that will assist with the ability to be able to lift without hurting their back. * Personal Hygiene and Dressing-- the patients have a difficult time with these tasks, and will occasionally have problems with, and may be ashamed to ask for help, but say kindly that you're there for them, and that you're willing to do anything that might make it a bit easier for them. * Provides small procedures -- there may be sometimes where the nurse will have to suction the throat, change a dressing for instance and so on. This gives you a little bit of a lead of what nurses actually do.
They may have these above duties, plus some more specific jobs that they may need to be responsible for.