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Acute Care Nurses

  • Bright Outlook
  • Rapid Growth
  • Numerous Job Openings

Provide advanced nursing care for patients with acute conditions such as heart attacks, respiratory distress syndrome, or shock. May care for pre- and post-operative patients or perform advanced, invasive diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.

What you’d do

  • Discuss illnesses and treatments with patients and family members.
  • Diagnose acute or chronic conditions that could result in rapid physiological deterioration or life-threatening instability.
  • Perform emergency medical procedures, such as basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), and other condition-stabilizing interventions.
  • Assess urgent and emergent health conditions, using both physiologically and technologically derived data.
  • Set up, operate, or monitor invasive equipment and devices, such as colostomy or tracheotomy equipment, mechanical ventilators, catheters, gastrointestinal tubes, and central lines.
  • Document data related to patients' care, including assessment results, interventions, medications, patient responses, or treatment changes.
  • Administer blood and blood product transfusions or intravenous infusions, monitoring patients for adverse reactions.
  • Interpret information obtained from electrocardiograms (EKGs) or radiographs (x-rays).

Skills that matter

  • Critical Thinking
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Service Orientation
  • Speaking
  • Active Learning
  • Active Listening

How to get there

Considerable preparation: most need a four-year bachelor's degree

Also called

  • Cardiovascular ICU Nurse (Cardiovascular Intense Care Unit Nurse)
  • Cardiovascular Surgery Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (Cardiovascular Surgery ACNP)
  • Charge Nurse
  • Staff Nurse
  • Acute Care Nurse
  • Cardiac Interventional Care Nurse

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