Critical Care

As defined by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Critical care nursing is that specialty within nursing that deals specifically with human responses to life-threatening problems. Critical care units (CCUs) or intensive care units (ICUs) are intended to meet the special necessities of acutely and critical care patients.
Critical care nurses are responsible for the care of patients with acute and unstable physiologic problems, including their caregivers. Critical care nurses’ role include assessing life-threating conditions, commencing appropriate interventions, and evaluating the outcome of each intervention. This type of nurses are very knowledgeable in anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, advanced skills and possess the ability to manipulate advanced biotechnology. To rapidly recognize and manage complications these nurses do frequent assessments to monitor patterns in the patient’s physiologic parameters such as BP, and EKG. When taking care of their patients, critical care nurses often face ethical dilemmas which can lead to emotional exhaustion or burnout. As a result, it is very important that all team members maintain healthy work environment.
According to AACN a critically ill patient is one who is at high risk for actual or potential life-threating health problems and who requires intense and attentive nursing care. Patients are generally admitted to the ICU for one of three reasons. One, a physically unstable patient requiring sophisticated clinical judgment. Two, patients at risk for serious complications requiring frequent assessments and often invasive interventions. And three, patients may need intensive and complicated nursing support due to the use of polypharmacy and advanced biotechnology.
Pediatric Emergencies
According to Pediatrics Emergencies power point in the U.S. 34% of all Emergency Room/Emergency Department visits are pediatric. Approaches recommended to interact with the pediatric population include: refer to children by their preferred name, taking a hands off approach, compare child’s baseline with current assessment, provide family centered care and maintaining the presence of caregiver, keeping a child friendly environment and involving them in the plan or care rather than just referring to the parents. Furthermore it is also imperative to play and act out according to the normal growth and development of each child, maintaining honesty, speaking calmly and acknowledging positive behavior, and reassuring parents constantly.