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How to become Critical Care Nurse in 2024

Critical Care Nurse Provide specialized nursing care for patients in critical or coronary care units.

Critical Care Nurse is Also Know as

In different settings, Critical Care Nurse is titled as

  • Certified Critical Care Nurse
  • Critical Care Nurse Practitioner
  • Critical Care Registered Nurse (CCRN)
  • ICU Critical Care NP (Intensive Care Unit Critical Care Nurse Practitioner)
  • ICU Nurse (Intensive Care Unit Nurse)
  • Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse (ICU RN)
  • Newborn ICU RN (Newborn Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse)
  • Nurse
  • Pediatric Critical Care Nurse Practitioner
  • Staff Nurse

Education and Training of Critical Care Nurse

Critical Care Nurse is categorized in Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Critical Care Nurse

A considerable amount of work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, an accountant must complete four years of college and work for several years in accounting to be considered qualified.

Education Required for Critical Care Nurse

Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

Degrees Related to Critical Care Nurse

Training Required for Critical Care Nurse

Employees in these occupations usually need several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational training.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Critical Care Nurse in different industries are

What Do Critical Care Nurse do?

  • Identify patients' age-specific needs and alter care plans as necessary to meet those needs.
  • Provide post-mortem care.
  • Evaluate patients' vital signs or laboratory data to determine emergency intervention needs.
  • Perform approved therapeutic or diagnostic procedures, based upon patients' clinical status.
  • Administer blood and blood products, monitoring patients for signs and symptoms related to transfusion reactions.
  • Administer medications intravenously, by injection, orally, through gastric tubes, or by other methods.
  • Advocate for patients' and families' needs, or provide emotional support for patients and their families.
  • Set up and monitor medical equipment and devices such as cardiac monitors, mechanical ventilators and alarms, oxygen delivery devices, transducers, or pressure lines.
  • Monitor patients' fluid intake and output to detect emerging problems, such as fluid and electrolyte imbalances.
  • Monitor patients for changes in status and indications of conditions such as sepsis or shock and institute appropriate interventions.
  • Assess patients' pain levels or sedation requirements.
  • Assess patients' psychosocial status and needs, including areas such as sleep patterns, anxiety, grief, anger, and support systems.
  • Collaborate with other health care professionals to develop and revise treatment plans, based on identified needs and assessment data.
  • Collect specimens for laboratory tests.
  • Compile and analyze data obtained from monitoring or diagnostic tests.
  • Conduct pulmonary assessments to identify abnormal respiratory patterns or breathing sounds that indicate problems.
  • Document patients' medical histories and assessment findings.
  • Document patients' treatment plans, interventions, outcomes, or plan revisions.
  • Identify patients at risk of complications due to nutritional status.
  • Prioritize nursing care for assigned critically ill patients, based on assessment data or identified needs.
  • Assist physicians with procedures such as bronchoscopy, endoscopy, endotracheal intubation, or elective cardioversion.
  • Ensure that equipment or devices are properly stored after use.
  • Identify malfunctioning equipment or devices.
  • Assess family adaptation levels and coping skills to determine whether intervention is needed.
  • Coordinate patient care conferences.
  • Participate in professional organizations and continuing education to improve practice knowledge and skills.
  • Participate in the development, review, or evaluation of nursing practice protocols.
  • Plan, provide, or evaluate educational programs for nursing staff, interdisciplinary health care team members, or community members.
  • Supervise and monitor unit nursing staff.

Qualities of Good Critical Care Nurse

  • Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
  • Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
  • Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
  • Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
  • Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
  • Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
  • Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
  • Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
  • Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
  • Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
  • Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
  • Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
  • Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
  • Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
  • Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
  • Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
  • Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
  • Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
  • Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
  • Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
  • Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
  • Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
  • Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
  • Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
  • Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
  • Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
  • Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
  • Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
  • Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
  • Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
  • Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
  • Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
  • Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
  • Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
  • Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
  • Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
  • Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
  • Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
  • Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
  • Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
  • Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
  • Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
  • Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
  • Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
  • Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
  • Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
  • Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
  • Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
  • Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
  • Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
  • Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
  • Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.

Tools Used by Critical Care Nurse

  • Angiocaths
  • Apnea monitors
  • Arterial blood gas testing equipment
  • Arterial line catheters
  • Automated external defibrillators AED
  • Automated medicine dispensing equipment
  • Autotransfusion systems
  • Bed scales
  • Bedpans
  • Bilevel positive airway pressure BiPAP ventilators
  • Blood drawing syringes
  • Blood glucometers
  • Blood pressure monitors
  • Blood warming equipment
  • Bulb syringes
  • Cardiac monitors
  • Chest drains
  • Clinical trapeze traction bars
  • Continuous passive motion CPM equipment
  • Continuous positive airway pressure CPAP ventilators
  • Cooling blankets
  • Crash carts
  • Crutches
  • Crutchfield tongs
  • Desktop computers
  • Digital medical thermometers
  • Doppler ultrasound equipment
  • Echocardiogram equipment
  • Electrocardiography EKG machines
  • Electronic compressor nebulizers
  • End tidal carbon dioxide monitors
  • Endotracheal ET tubes
  • Enema equipment
  • Enteral feeding sets
  • Epidural catheters
  • Evacuated blood collection tubes
  • Fetal monitors
  • Flexible laryngoscopes
  • Foot cradles
  • Geriatric chairs
  • Graduated glass laboratory cylinders
  • Halo traction equipment
  • Handheld calculators
  • Handheld nebulizers
  • Hemodynamic monitors
  • Hoyer lifts
  • Hyper/hypothermia blankets
  • Hypodermic syringes
  • Ice collars
  • Incentive spirometers
  • Incision drainage equipment
  • Intra-aortic balloon pumps IABP
  • Intracranial pressure monitors
  • Intravenous infusion pumps
  • Intravenous IV administration sets
  • Intubation sets
  • Kidney dialysis equipment
  • Lancets
  • Laptop computers
  • Manual resuscitation bags
  • Mechanical intermittent positive pressure ventilators
  • Mechanical stethoscopes
  • Medical examination protective gloves
  • Medical gurneys
  • Medical nasal cannulas
  • Medical scales
  • Multiple line infusion pumps
  • Multiple lumen central line catheters
  • Nasal suctioning equipment
  • Nasogastric tubes
  • Occlusion clamps
  • Oral suctioning equipment
  • Orthopedic splinting equipment
  • Ostomy equipment
  • Otoscopes
  • Oxygen concentrators
  • Oxygen delivery masks
  • Oxygen flowmeters
  • Patient controlled analgesia PCA pumps
  • Patient restraints
  • Patient walkers
  • Pericardiocentesis kits
  • Personal digital assistants PDA
  • Pill crushers
  • Pill splitters
  • Pneumatic boots
  • Protective face shields
  • Protective gowns
  • Protective medical face masks
  • Pulmonary artery catheters
  • Pulse oximeters
  • Safety goggles
  • Sequential compression devices
  • Specialty patient care beds
  • Specimen collection containers
  • Sphygmomanometers
  • Straight hemostats
  • Straight surgical scissors
  • Surgical irrigation sets
  • Surgical razors
  • Surgical scalpels
  • Surgical staple removers
  • Suture removal kits
  • Tablet computers
  • Telemetry monitors
  • Therapeutic whirlpool baths
  • Thoracentesis trays
  • Tourniquets
  • Tracheal suctioning equipment
  • Tracheotomy sets
  • Traction weights
  • Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation TENS equipment
  • Transcutaneous pacemakers
  • Transfer boards
  • Transport cardiac monitors
  • Transvenous pacemakers
  • Ultrasound transducers
  • Urinalysis test strips
  • Urinary catheters
  • Venous oxygen saturation SVO2 monitors
  • Ventricular assist devices VAD
  • Wheelchairs

Technology Skills required for Critical Care Nurse

  • Allscripts Professional EHR
  • American Association of Critical Care Nurses AACN Medicopeia
  • Amkai AmkaiCharts
  • Bizmatics PrognoCIS EMR
  • Cerner Millennium
  • ChartWare EMR
  • e-MDs software
  • eClinicalWorks EHR software
  • Epic Systems
  • GE Healthcare Centricity EMR
  • Google Drive
  • Medical software
  • MEDITECH Healthcare Information System HCIS
  • MEDITECH software
  • Medscribbler Enterprise
  • MicroFour PracticeStudio.NET EMR
  • Microsoft Office software
  • Microsoft SharePoint
  • NextGen Healthcare Information Systems EMR
  • Oracle Taleo
  • PEPID RN Critical Care RNCC
  • SOAPware EMR
  • StatCom Patient Flow Logistics Enterprise Suite
  • SynaMed EMR
  • Texas Medical Software SpringCharts EMR
  • Web browser software
  • Word processing software