At my volunteer job, I’ve been notified that I’ve been moved departments from pre/post op into the ICU. I start in June. 

Today we had our basic training.  No pushups involved. Major differences between the previous department and the ICU seem to be.

1.  There are three crash carts on the floor instead of one.  We’ve been instructed that our part as a volunteer in a code blue is to “get out of the way.”   “Getting out of the way” wasn’t covered in my CPR course, however.  So who knows how I’m going to respond.

2.  Visitors are monitored much more carefully.  The department is locked down. Visitors must be granted access, no children are allowed, and no more than two visitors at a time are allowed in rooms unless a patient is on their death bed.

3.  We REALLY are not allowed to have much patient contact in this department due to the critical state of the patients. Therefore, many of our duties seem to be more secretarial in nature.  That won’t make for good stories, but hopefully some drama will go down regardless.  Maybe I’ll get to tell a story about how we ran out of orange copy paper.