Time Will Tell

Unfortunately for me, my ICU experience was cut by one day because my unborn son decided he wanted to try to come early. Luckily for him they stopped the contractions but I am supposed to take it easy until Monday. Tuesday is when I start my ER training. I am sure I will have LOTS to blog about when that starts!

For the past three weeks I have been in Surgical Intensive Care (SICU) training. I must say, it is very different than Medical/Neuro ICU (MICU). The first thing I noticed is that everything goes much smoother down there. Surgeons are just a different breed of doctors. Most of the time they don't have to deal with multi-system problems because their patients have been operated on, which means one thing not a million. I was able to see a few open heart surgery patients come out of surgery (at our hospital, open heart patients come right to SICU after OR, they do not go to the Recovery Room). As a float nurse, I will never take care of an open heart patient but I was able to see how incredibly COMPLICATED it is! Holy Shit! The open heart patients come out with tubes that go everywhere and are hooked up to machines I have never seen before. It's very intimidating.

I was nervous about SICU. The nurses there have very strong personalities and surgeons don't have the best bedside manner either. But all in all I liked my experience. I think the nurses accepted me just fine and I did my best (which is all I can do.) It will be different when I am on my own, but I am not afraid to ask for help which is the most important thing in an ICU. Never assume you know everything or those nurses will eat you alive! There is a small window between life and death and you always need to remember that.

That is all I have for now. I will catch up with you next week hopefully. Have a nice weekend!