icu

This post is supposed to be a primer about billing in critical care. I'll update it regularly as practices change.

It's important for the intensive care unit (ICU) treatment team to construct and communicate our daily assessment and plan with all relevant parties involved in a patient's care. We accomplish this during "rounds" each morning with a team…

Procalcitonin (PCT) is a 116 amino acid peptide precursor to calcitonin, a hormone involved in calcium homeostasis. PCT increases significantly in the context of proinflammatory bacterial infections but remains low in viral and other…

As a critical care fellow, I'll spend a total of two months (four, 2-week rotations) in the cardiac intensive care unit (ICU). I just finished my first rotation there and got to befriend many of the cardiac surgery attendings and fellows…

I spent the last two weeks in the coronary care unit (CCU) as part of my first elective. Although the CCU is an ICU, the patients are much more "medical" than surgical, and therefore, present different challenges compared to what I saw at…

Moonlighting basically entails taking on paid work on top of my normal job. Our program restricts moonlighting hours to ~20 hours per month, so we remain focused on our fellowship at hand instead of lucrative opportunities to make extra…

Here's the EPIC EMR template I made for rounding in the VAD/transplant ICU. The formatting is off (bold, centered, etc), but the shortlinks are still there for the problem list, problem list, recent vitals, VAD data, ins/outs, recent labs,…

Tomorrow is my last day on the VAD and transplant ICU service and concludes my ICU requirements as a resident. I intentionally front-loaded my ICU rotations this year to rule in/out a critical care fellowship, and I'm happy to say that I'll…

I'm beginning my last week on the cardiac transplant and VAD ICU rotation - one week from finishing all of my required ICU rotations as a resident! It's shaping up to be my most draining week too with two calls plus weekend coverage and a…

Ventricular assist devices (VADs) can support the right (RVAD) and left (LVAD) ventricles and were initially utilized as mechanical circulatory support devices for bridge-to-transplant (BTT) in heart failure. Modern continuous flow VADs are…