Emergency Nursing, Anyone?

Nursing as a profession is not only limited to a hospital practice. It is a profession that can be performed even in the forest, in the seas or even on highways. One very exciting area of nursing is Critical Care Transport (CCT) nursing, a field of nursing that takes care of transporting emergency cases to hospital facilities either by air or by land transport. It is a field of nursing that is full of adrenaline rush yet very satisfying.   

CCTRNs are registered nurses who work in a critical care transport facility. These are nurses who provide care for emergency patients and bring them to the nearest hospital facility through an ambulance. This field of nursing is s breath taking one since the cases that CCTRNs encounter are of various nature, from heart attacks to vehicular accidents. Thus, a critical care transport nurse is someone who is expert in providing the immediate intervention for the patient to reach the hospital alive and be seen by a physician for more advance and intensive medical life-saving intervention.

It is said that transport nursing isn’t just about providing medical care but it is also about providing a safe environment for the patient during transport to a health facility. A patient undergoing an emergency experiences extreme panic attack which calls for the nurse to offer an environment that will make the patient feel secured thus relieving the anxiety and pain a patient feels at that very moment.

CCTRNs undergo a special training and continuing education that will help develop their stamina and their clinical eye that is very useful in emergency cases. During emergency, a nurse cannot put much time on assessment thus a very keen sense of sight is very important in visually assessing the patient. Shock is one of the most critical cases that must be watched out for by CCTRNs. Detecting if a patient is about to undergo shock needs a keen assessment thus as a nurse, a very vigilant attitude must be assumed by a CCT nurse.

Along the way of transporting the patient to the health facility, a CCTRN has the responsibility to observe note down the changes in the condition of the patient. This is side to side with providing the basic interventions like medicine and intravenous fluids. This career calls for an individual to be skilled in multitasking and doing everything with accuracy despite the urgency of each action taken.

Attitude-wise, a nurse in CCT must be able to empathize to the patient and also to the patient’s family. A distressed patient is most likely to ask many questions and it is in the way that the nurse answers that this patient will understand his/her emergency situation. In this way, it promotes participation so that nursing interventions can easily and successfully be implemented.

This field of CCT nursing is a growing field thus it is calling for more nurses to consider the profession. It is another avenue for nurses to offer their services to a community that health emergencies can always happen anytime and anywhere.