The ACCU employs over 200 critical care nurses, from keen newbies to old hands with more critical care experience than some of you will ever acquire. You can learn as much from them as from the consultants. The nurses are not here to serve you; you are both here to serve our patients. You can help best do so by:
- Responding to calls for help from nurses promptly, whether that be attending to a patient in pain or rewriting a drug chart.
- Tidying up after yourself – the only exception would be having to run to an emergency, though you should come back afterwards.
- Regularly checking up on your patients during the shift, more so the sicker they are.
- Communicating plans or changes of plan to the bedside nurse verbally. Don’t just rely on it being written down.
- Drawing on the considerable experience of many of our nurses, not just in general critical care, but also in how we manage particular issues on ACCU.