Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Nursing
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses are in very high demand and have very high pay, earning US$85.29 (PH₱4,600) per hour on average in the United States with an annual overtime pay of around US$12,000 (PH₱660,000).
ICU nurses are in high demand.
By 2024, demand for nurses is expected to increase by 16%. People are living longer, there are more chronic diseases, and prevention is becoming more important.
The intensive care unit (ICU) is a challenging and complicated field. Assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, implementation, and evaluation are all used in the nursing process.
Nurses in ICUs employ advanced skills to care for patients who are critically unwell. It is centered on restorative, curative, rehabilitative, sustainable, or palliative care, according to the needs of the patients. It promotes multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration in the development of interventions to restore stability, prevent problems, and achieve and sustain optimal patient responses. ICU nurses are in high demand due to their skills.
Nursing Specialty Programs by the Critical Care Nurses Association of the Philippines (CCNAPI) are available for aspiring ICU nurses.
In the Philippines, to become a registered nurse, one must earn a bachelor’s degree and pass the Professional Regulatory Board of Nursing’s national license exam (PRC-BON). The Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 (RA 9173) establishes guidelines for nurses to practice and requires PRC-BON-recognized specialty organizations and the Department of Health (DOH) to offer comprehensive nursing specialty programs like CCN (Article VII, Section 31). The specialist group CCNAPI provides critical care nurses with training in order to fulfill this duty. These specialty nursing programs provide certificates of training to nurses who undergo these.
ICU nurses usually work at large hospitals with specialized equipment and resources.
As an ICU nurse, you should expect to work at larger hospitals. This is because hospital networks relocate an ICU unit (along with its nurses) to a larger hospital to pool resources since the nature of the work in the ICU requires specialized equipment. There are transfer agreements in place between hospitals without critical care units and the closest intensive care unit. ICU nurses spend almost all of their time in their unit due to the nature of the job.
Being an ICU Nurse requires a wide range of advanced nursing skills.
Nurses who work in critical care must be knowledgeable in a variety of advanced nursing practices such as assessing intensive care patients, identifying problems, providing treatment, and collaborating with other members of the critical care team.
Successful critical care nurses have interpersonal communication, leadership, strategic planning, critical thinking, and decision-making skills. They need these skills because they communicate with their patients’ families, who are usually under a lot of stress. Knowing how to console families while keeping expectations realistic is critical for an ICU nurse.
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Although challenging, a job as an ICU nurse is a fulfilling career path that is in very high demand. It will allow you to use your vast expertise to care for terminally sick patients.
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