How To Become an ICU Nurse

If you want to become an ICU Nurse, you should have the heart to give your one-on-one patient care. It would help if you embraced nursing interventions from the most basic procedure of bathing your patient, turning him to side every two hours, changing their diaper, draining his urine bag, and so on.

Becoming an ICU Nurse

Being an ICU nurse doesn’t limit you to doing highly specialized skills and administering emergency and highly potent medications; it also helps the patient assist the patient in his hygiene and self-care.

The starting point of your career towards becoming an ICU nurse is to finish your BSN degree in nursing school. After you are done with this fundamental step, you should still review your NCLEX. Once you pass the exam, you are then given a license to practice as a nurse. However, even while you are examining, you can already do some volunteer work, exposing you to different areas and feeding you with experience working with your co-workers and other people.

Going back, once you earned your nursing license already, remember GIFTED Healthcare provides ICU job in Davis, CA in case you want to work in California, or you can choose among the offers from you way back when you were still in college. Once you are hired in the hospital, you always can’t expect that you will be assigned to the intensive care unit.

Experience

Well, it’s just that most hospitals don’t hire new graduate nurses for a position in the ICU. However, you can try your luck because, at times, some hospitals hire even new graduate nurses. However, of course, you still need to undergo their short training and internship program. On the other hand, you can still apply for a position as a staff nurse in the hospital and accept the area you will be assigned to. In a matter of months or years of actual hospital experience, you can sign-up for the hospital’s internship program for ICU nurses.

If you pass the program, then you can begin your career as an ICU nurse. It might take some time, but you have to wait; instead of wasting your time in waiting for a job offer as an ICU nurse, it will be better if you gain experience as a staff nurse in other areas. During this time, you should harness your skills and advance your nursing knowledge. More so, while waiting for the time for you to get into the internship for ICU, you can also take your master’s degree in nursing so as when the time comes for you to prove your worth in the ICU, you will have a high chance of being hired for the position.

With a master’s degree, you also have higher chances of being promoted. My point here is that you may not become an ICU nurse the moment you earned your license, but that should not be a reason for you to be depressed and squander; instead, do your best to prepare yourself for a better future nursing field. When it’s your time, then at least you’ve gained enough experience and edge to your co-nurses in the unit.