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Nursing at Texas Children's Hospital
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Nursing overview
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Nurses are an essential part of every patient care team, fulfilling
an important role in providing children and families with the
highest quality care. Nurses -- who have the closest contact with
patients -- assess needs and plan and coordinate care. They
administer treatments and monitor progress throughout a child's
hospital visit. Many nurses come to Texas Children's to use their
skills in specialty care or to gain experience in one of these
areas:
- Advanced practice
- Acute care
- Cardiovascular intensive care
- Neonatal intensive care
- Pediatric intensive care
-
Primary care
- Progressive care
- Renal dialysis
- Surgery
Learn more about
nursing certification
at Texas Children's Hospital.
Advanced practice nurses work in a
variety of settings and usually concentrate on a specific area of
care, such as cancer, cardiology, intensive care, pulmonary,
transplants or neonatology. They coordinate care for patients and,
working closely with staff nurses, act as expert nursing
consultants. Nurse practitioners have extended education and
training in the areas of physical assessment and diagnostic testing.
They are involved directly in managing patient care, often carrying
a caseload of their own patients. They can prescribe medications,
order and interpret lab tests and perform certain procedures.
Acute care nurses function as
members of a multidisciplinary team to provide care for patients
with a variety of health conditions. Each acute care floor in the
hospital is designated for a particular type of pediatric care, such
as neurology, surgery, renal, pulmonary, adolescent medicine,
cardiology, cancer, transplant, and general pediatric medicine.
Acute care nurses working in these areas develop an in-depth
knowledge of the condition or illness which they help treat, and
often form long-term relationships with the children and families
under their care.
One example of acute care provided by
Texas Children's nurses takes place in the EEG monitoring unit. This
unit includes three beds that are staffed by nurses and technicians
from Neurophysiology. This staff continuously monitors patients to
record information about their seizures. The information is used to
prescribe treatment, such as medications, surgery or various other
forms of therapy.
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Nurses in the
cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) provide care for the
post-operative cardiac patient. CVICU patients require constant
observation, high acuity nursing care and the use of specialized
intensive care equipment. Common diagnoses seen in the unit are
congenital heart disease, congenital heart anomalies, acquired heart
disease and heart transplants. Nurses in this unit also care for
patients on extracorporeal life support systems (ECLS).
Nurses in the
neonatal intensive
care unit (NICU) are trained to manage highly technical care and to
provide an appropriate environment for developing newborns. Neonatal
nurses provide breakthrough nitric oxide therapy and extracorporeal
membrane oxygenation (ECMO). They also assist in labor and delivery
to help stabilize a sick neonate and are part of the transport team.
The
pediatric intensive care unit (PICU)
staff provides immediate care for critically ill medical and
surgical patients. PICU patients require constant observation,
high-acuity nursing care and specialized equipment. Common diagnoses
seen in the PICU are respiratory distress syndrome, diabetes,
seizure disorders, transplants, sepsis and organ failure.
Some nurses work for primary care
pediatricians who are part of
Texas Children’s Pediatric Associates
(TCPA). Nursing care at these offices places a special emphasis on
patient education and family support, particularly for new mothers.
Special services such as the Baby Buddy Program provide expectant
mothers with information and instruction on how to care for their
babies. TCPA nurses also have embarked on several new outreach
programs to lend support and nursing expertise to families in the
community.
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Patients in the
progressive care
unit (PCU) are acutely or chronically ill and often are admitted
from intensive care. Nurses take the lead in coordinating care for
patients who require continuous monitoring and observation, with
special emphasis given to respiratory, neurological and surgical
disorders. Many patients depend on technological support, notably
those with tracheostomies or negative pressure ventilators (also
known as "iron lungs"). Nurses in PCU may also teach families to
care for their chronically ill child at home.
Texas Children’s pediatric
nephrology nurses practice in every setting from the intensive care
unit to the patient’s home. They have expertise in conservative
management, peritoneal dialysis, hemodialysis, continuous renal
replacement therapies, pheresis, renal and extra-renal
transplantation. Nephrology nurses assess the impact of renal
disease on the child and family, deliver renal replacement
therapies, educate patients on disease management, and help the
end-stage renal disease patient achieve an optimal level of
functioning.
Nephrology nurses also perform a full
complement of pheresis procedures: therapeutic plasma exchanges; red
cell exchanges; leukapheresis; peripheral blood stem cell harvests;
plateletpheresis; lymphocyte collections and granulocyte
collections.
Surgery is frightening for anyone,
but even more so for a child. Texas Children’s operating room nurses
have excellent organizational and management skills, along with the
ability to work independently in a high-pressure situation. Skilled
in both circulating and scrubbing roles, operating room nurses
coordinate patient care during all phases of surgery, bringing their
expertise and compassion to the operating table. Texas Children’s
operating room nurses work in fourteen surgical specialties, including:
  
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