This podcast is available on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Google Play
Who You’ll Hear
Kati Kleber, MSN RN CCRN-K – Nurse educator, former cardiac med-surg/stepdown and neurocritical care nurse, author, speaker
Melissa Stafford, BSN RN CCRN SCRN – Highly experienced and currently practicing nationally certified neurocritical care nurse
Nacole Riccaboni, MBA MSN APRN AGACNP-BC FNP-BC CCRN-CMC is a critical care advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) in Orlando, Florida.
What You’ll Learn
- Important Points
- First things
- Things to know
- History and procedures
- Potassium lab
- Vitals
- EKG
- Orders
- When to freak out
- Lung vs Cardiac
Top Tips for Cardiac Nurses. An Interview with Nurse Nacole
In this interview, we interviewed Nurse Nacole about tips for cardiac nurses. Nacole is a certified critical care nurse who is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Nursing Practice. Check out her website here.
A few important points
If you are a new grad that is not taking accountability for his or her learning and mistakes, it is a huge red flag.
If you want to learn more about something, you’ll have to do that at home – many times there isn’t enough time to do that while providing care at the same time
First things a new nurse should understand about cardiac
- First focus on understanding the anatomy of the heart
- Nursing.com NCLEX Cardiac Essentials
- Second, focus on the ECG interpretation
- ECG Interpretation – course
- Interpret EKG’s Like a Boss– blog post
- Focus on the patient – not the monitor
- The patients don’t always present like the textbook
Things to know
Cardiac history / procedures
- Parameters can be different depending on the different surgeries, procedures, or history
- Know the parameters!
- Look at nursing orders before calling / treating
- Know the parameters!
Potassium lab is a big focus for cardiac surgeons and cardiologist
- Very diligent and proactive to supplement potassium
- Your body doesn’t hang on to potassium if your magnesium is low.
- If you have to replace both, replace magnesium first then do your potassium.
- Magnesium doesn’t come on a BMP; you’ll have to add that on if the MD wants it or you’re concerned about ectopy.
Vitals / monitor changes first, then it’s evident in the assessment
- Know your patient’s trends because even though they may be in technically “in range” it may be abnormally high or low for that unique person
- Some people will not be concerned by alarms that stop or don’t continue; it is essential to see what caused the alarm
- Was it a run of PVC’s? How many runs have they been having?
- Was it a pause? How long was the pause?
- Some people will not be concerned by alarms that stop or don’t continue; it is essential to see what caused the alarm
EKG Dance Video
Know your orders
- If something changed, it’s not your job to interpret the EKG perfectly on an instant – but know when something changes and get a 12-lead if you’ve got an order to do so
- Many times there’s a standing order to get a 12-lead with telemetry changes
When to freak out/intervene?
- When they’re symptomatic, even if the vitals are okay
- Persistent issues like increasing runs PVC’s
Lung vs. cardiac
- Use an ABG to differentiate
More Tips for Cardiac Nurses:
Nursing.com also has quite a few great resources for nursing students and new nurses. There are various courses, or the Nursing.com. You can get access to Academy for 7 days for only $1! The specific courses that would give valuable tips for cardiac nurses include:
- Interpret EKGs Strips Like a Boss!
- EKG – Free Nursing.com Course
- Med-Surg/Cardiac – Free Nursing.com Course
- How to Get Your Cardiac Nurse Certification (CSC)
Thank you for doing this podcast! Cardiac nursing is like my Achilles heel, I feel so lost. Thank you. I checked out the link to the Cardiac Essentials course and it looks great but I don’t think NRSNG is offering individual courses anymore. Which is too bad since I don’t need the whole academy.
Thank you again.
Shari, I am so glad that you found this podcast helpful.
The Cardiac Essentials is still being offered as a stand-alone course. It is a one time fee of $29. If you click the link and scroll down, you will see where you can buy it.
I know, they’re shifting to that new model of all the courses for a monthly subscription. But, the $1 3-day trial allows you to check it out pretty closely. Just time it for when you’ve got some time in those 3 days. It lets you check out their EKG course too, which is pretty awesome as well as compliments it too. The EKG course explained a-fib/flutter in a way that suddenly made it click for me so I’m a big proponent of that one as well. You most likely could get through all of the content in less than a month (depending on the time you have) and then could cancel after that month and it’d be cheaper than buying the course individually. Just an idea as they switch from courses to subscriptions!