CRITICAL CARE NURSING

Critical Care Nursing

Critical Care Nursing

Introduction

Nursing is an exciting and challenging field to study. Nursing uses a scientific process to plan care for people in acute illnesses and teach them how to stay healthy or cope with their illness. Nurses basically the helper of the doctors. They assist the doctors by giving medicine, treatments, tests, injections, or draw blood as directed by the physician. They also observe patients for mental, physical, social and or emotional changes and record changes. (Squire, M. W., Callaghan, J. J., Goetz, D. D., et al. 2006, 672-87)

Critical Care / Intensive Care (ICU) Nursing

Nurses who work in critical care units are responsible for providing care to patients who are experiencing or are at-risk for experiencing life-threatening conditions. Patients typically cared for in a critical care unit include patients that have had major invasive surgery, accident and trauma patients, or patients with multiple organ failure.

Nurses who work in critical care must assess and monitor the patient closely in order to identify subtle changes in a patient's condition that warrant immediate intervention. Patients who are admitted to critical care tend to be medically unstable, requiring constant cardiac and respiratory monitoring and continual adjustment of treatments, such as the titration and dosing of multiple intravenous medications and changes in ventilatory support. Critical care nurses must be able to interpret, integrate and respond to a wide array of clinical information. Because of the critical nature of patients' conditions, nurses working in critical care are often confronted with dealing with end-of-life issues and sometimes other ethical dilemmas related to withholding, withdrawing or medical futile care. Nevertheless, the NPICU was closed within 11 months of its operation even though the unit seemed to hold so much promise for the care of all the psychiatric patients in this hospital. Why? The discussion that follows is not meant to attach blame, but rather to examine issues so that other staff members in psychiatric settings contemplating the development of a psychiatric intensive care unit may profit from what was learned in this situation. (Squire, M. W., Callaghan, J. J., Goetz, D. D., et al. 2006, 672-87)

Explanation

Reasons of economy. The opening and dosing of the NPICU occurred in 1985, a time of severe economic restraint. The reason given for the closure was lack of financial resources. However, it is important that cost be considered from both a long-term and a short-term perspective.

Some patients are unable to make decisions about their care in the unit because of the nature of their illness. An important role of the critical care nurse is to ensure that the patient and/or family are well informed about the care that that patient is receiving, that the patient and family receive the necessary information to make informed and highly personal decisions about the patient's care, and that the patient and family's decisions are respected in the development of any treatment plan for the patient. (Squire, M. W., Callaghan, J. J., Goetz, ...