Clinical day 1 & 2

I followed Jodi Wimmer who has worked in the ICU for 9 years. What I learned in the two 12 hour shifts that I followed her is that the ICU can be intimidating due to not having a physician on at all times.  I have come to rely on having that comfort in the Emergency department.  I have someone that is there to help control the situation if need be whereast the ICU is kind of on your own.  I learned alot about staffing, how they have a staff on call, how they only have so many people scheduled etc.  THe ICU can go from being completely full (8 pts) to having maybe one or two patients.  Due to this there could be one nurse to a few nurses on at a time.  In the morning we would do scheduling etc.  Of course we were there to assist with the higher accuity patients which at many times times the need of two nurses on a couple of the patients was needed.  In other aspects of the ICU, it was very similar to the ED.  I did learn a lot of different medications that were used much more frequently in the ICU that we dont use or infrequently use in the ED.  It was nice to see the other side of care.  The patients that I saw in the ED and the care they received when we transferred them into the ICU.  It was fun to follow someone in a position of power, or leadership.  I observed the sense of a role model that the charge nurse is.  Many of the nurses though were competent would refer to the charge nurse for an opinion or ask her questions just because she was the charge nurse.  I found this to be a great compliment to the charge nurse.  It showed that she had great leadership qualities.  Not only this but she was someone that they could count on.