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ARTICLE FROM OUR GUEST EDITOR!
WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE A CATH LAB NURSE
By: Julie Liston, RN, BSN, CCRN
Being a cardiac catheterization lab
nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in Helena, Montana is a unique opportunity to utilize a wide
variety of nursing skills. When thinking about the role of a cath lab nurse, words
like challenging, exciting, fatiguing, stressful and rewarding come to mind. The
challenges are many and varied, but the rewards are great. It provides a wonderful
chance not only to care for our cath patients, but also to work with other health care
professionals in a collaborative setting, functioning as a team to provide the best care
we can.
As cardiac cath lab nurses, we are responsible for many different aspects of our patients'
care. First, we provide pre-procedure teaching and instructions. This gives us
a great opportunity to meet our patients prior to the heart cath, to get to know their
health history, current medications and any special needs they might have. We give
them a chance to ask questions and we have some time to teach them about coronary artery
disease and heart attack risk factor modification. We also get to find out a little
bit about them as people. They often express their worries and fears, both about the
procedure itself and about what happens after the cath. We try to answer their
questions and allay their fears as much as possible.
During the procedure, we are responsible for maintaining our patient's safety and comfort,
as well as administering medications and treatments when necessary. We strive to
provide our patients with a sense of comfort and security by being a familiar
presence. In this way we hope to relieve some of their fear and anxiety.
After the procedure is finished, we take patients back to their rooms and report their
condition and findings to the nurses responsible for their care on that shift.
Depending on the circumstances, we may also be responsible for their further care, either
in the Intensive Care Unit or elsewhere. We may also be the nurses to discharge them
home from the hospital. In this way, we are involved in our patient's care from the
start to finish, from teaching them about coronary arteries and heart attacks, to starting
their IV, to wheeling them out the door at the end of the day.
Nurses, however, are not the only people involved in taking care of a heart cath
patient. We are part of a team consisting of: cardiovascular technicians, who scrub
in during the procedure and may also monitor and record the procedure; radiology
technicians, who might also scrub in or run the cath equipment and provide supplies; and
of course, Dr. Paustian, the cardiologist and team leader. Everyone on the cath team
at St. Peter's Hospital has a special role in the cath lab and they each do their
individual job extremely well. By working together as a team, we strive to provide
top-notch care to our patients.
We at St. Peter's Hospital have the unique opportunity to work with Dr. Paustian as our
cardiologist. He is a great motivator, leader and teacher. By keeping up on
the most current advancements and trends in treatments and technology himself, he leads us
to do the same. He is always willing to answer our questions and provide us with
great learning experiences. He challenges us to do our very best.
Being a cath lab nurse is not only challenging in terms of coordinating patient care and
keeping up on new technologies, but it is also quite unpredictable. We are "on
call" for a week at a time. We might get called in at any hour of the day or
night to do a heart cath on either a potentially or actually very unstable patient.
We might go from working in our yard at home to assisting in the care of a patient who is
having a heart attack within a matter of minutes. In the lab during a case, we also
have to be alert and aware of any potential complications. We must be ready to
respond to any change in the patient's condition from moment to moment.
All in all, it provides a wonderful setting to combine compassion with competence in
caring for our cath patients. We are called upon to use our knowledge and skills to
coordinate safe, efficient and effective care from start to finish. It is a job that
I thoroughly enjoy because of the camaraderie and teamwork of the entire cath lab team,
and because of the chance it gives me to care for patients when they really need a
knowledgeable, caring nurse to be by their side.
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