I started in an ICU and am still there. But I don’t think it’s the “pinnacle” of nursing for a bunch of reasons.
1) Depending on the structure of your hospital (especially now during COVID), ICUs are very different from each other. In some, you’ll basically not have vented, sedated patients. As soon as they get extubated, they’re moved to step-down or the floor. So you’ll learn a lot about vents, invasive treatments, drugs, and certain types of time management, but you won’t necessarily have a “holistic” view of these patients because you really won’t get to see them recover. On the flip side, some ICUs keep their patients the whole time, and you may actually get to see patients go from completely dependent on machines to heading out the door to rehab. (This’ll introduce you to a whole different type of time management. Trying to titrate drips on your unstable patients and keeping up with the call lights of your “stable” patient!) Neither of these structures is wrong, but they’re very different!
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2) In the ICU, you’ll need to learn a lot of new assessment skills, charting, and also technology. If you like troubleshooting, you might like this part. If not, it’s really aggravating to try to figure out why the arterial line pressure wave won’t show up correctly on your screen. (It’s a simple fix…buried two or three clicks down in a menu!) Or why the defibrillator isn’t pacing your patient anymore. There’s a learning curve to all of this, of course, and I hate to say that some people just aren’t “tech-inclined,” but it might be true…think about how *you* feel about it, especially if you can get a chance to shadow on the unit.
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3) The ICU isn’t always fulfilling. Sure, we save lives sometimes (so do floor nurses and lots of other nurses!…the ICU just keeps them alive after the CPR is over.) But sometimes, the patient wants to die peacefully, and the family pushes for “doing everything.” I’ve had shifts where all I wanted to do was apologize to my patient. Sometimes you do everything for a patient who wants to live, and they die anyway. I’ve had shifts where I know I did my best, and it still wasn’t enough. And also shifts where I questioned everything I did, wondering whether it was really my best, whether I could have been faster, called the provider sooner, etc. Also, ICUs have their share of frustrating frequent fliers: drug overdoses, DKA, missed-dialysis-and-now-my-potassium-is-8, endocarditis (see: drug overdoses), etc… It can be hard to feel like you’ve made a difference in someone’s life when you see them back on your admissions board every other week.
I’m not trying to talk you out of the ICU. But I don’t think that being an ICU nurse symbolizes the “full potential” of nursing. I learned ICU skills, and you learned procedural nursing skills-if you want to learn ICU nursing skills now, go for it! Your schedule will be worse (probably), and your stress level will probably be higher (at least for a while). Learning new things is a good challenge, and if you work off-shift, you might make more money. But I’d suggest you only do it because you actually want to work in the ICU, not to fulfill an abstract idea of “actualization.” If I could make the same money with less stress and a more predictable schedule, that would be valuable to me too.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHICH
