Discussion: Critical Care Nursing: Diagnosis & Management

Critical Care Environment

Multiple problems, multiple decisions, multiple outcomes. Critical care nursing offers an exciting environment suited to life-saving diagnosis and management of critically ill patients. Be it emergency departments, intensive care units, cardiac critical care, or pediatric critical care, there are many questions to ask and solutions to find to bring patients to a better outcome in this high-paced career.

Nurses are responsible for seeing changes and responding, sometimes very quickly, to a patient’s needs.

Richard is a nurse who has a Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN) and has been trained in assessing patients. He must have excellent attention to detail, investigative skills, and organization to succeed.

He may have two patients to care for if they are both really sick or, in the emergency department, he may have as many as 5 patients with a technician to assist him. Let’s look at some of the procedures he uses to diagnose and manage patients.

Teamwork

Teamwork in the critical care environment is a must. Say Richard a patient and found her to be having difficulty breathing. He calls on respiratory therapy to assist and notifies the physician, who orders a chest X-ray.

Questions

1. What does the critical care nurse NOT need to thrive in this fast paced career?

2. Critical care nurses can use SBAR as a tool to communicate important issues with the healthcare team. What does the acronym SBAR stand for?

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