All about me

I'm Tracey a 31 year old cardiac intensive care RN at a community hospital. I have been a nurse for 9 years now and have spent 7 1/2 of them in the CCU. Before that I worked in a medical/surgical/oncology unit. I liked the med/surg/onco but critical care was my passion. I didn't want to go there right out of nursing school as I wanted to get my feet wet before trying critical care. I'm glad I did it that way. It's not the right choice for everyone but it was for me. I have always worked the night shift. For the first about 3 years I only worked 11p-7a but then switched to 12 hour shifts 7p-7a so that I would only have to do 3 shifts a week. It works great for my family.

I'm an adreneline junky so critical care is my forte. I love the excitement of busy nights and patients that are quite sick. In fact, I would love to work somewhere that the patients are much sicker than they are here. I usually volunteer for the sickest patients in my unit. My co-workers are usually willing to comply too!!

Recently I applied for a new job called a critical care resource nurse. I have my interview Friday am. I was told that basically the position is mine and the interview is just a formality. This position involves doing all the emergencies in the building as well as rounding on the inpatient non-critical units putting out fires and keeping the patients stable or transferring them to the critical care units if they are unstable. Again..........just my forte!!!

I created this blog to write about the stresses involved in being a nurse, especially a critical care one. Though I am an adreneline junky it is a stressful job at times. Especially dealing with difficult patients, difficult families, confused patients, combative patients and worst of all patient deaths. I have sat with numerous patients while they died whose family wasn't there. Each one takes a small piece of my heart no matter if I'd known and cared for them for 5 minutes or 5 weeks. Death is a fact of life but not an easy one to deal with.

If you are interested in reading such stories then come along for my journey. You'll hear amazing stories along with sad ones, happy ones, and everything in between.