What are the duties of nurses in a CC unit?

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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.

First answer by Ranger22. Last edit by Cjonb. Contributor trust: 201 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 17 [recommend question]