>> I am Corey Burke and I am a professional staff nurse in the transplant ICU
at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
I believe that nursing has come a long way since Florence Nightingale and, you know,
just changing dressings and washing patients and although we still do that I feel like there's,
kind of, a misconception about what nurses do.
It's far more medically specific than that.
It's not the Johnson and Johnson commercial of the person in the brightly colored scrub top,
you know, giving water to a patient.
I do CPR. I titrate lifesaving drips.
I take care of patients on ventilators.
I do a lot more than what people think.
So I work three days a week, 12 hours each.
We are seven to seven regardless of a.m. or p.m. I do swing back and forth between night shift
and day shift so sometimes that gets a little hard.
You do work nights.
You do work weekends.
You do work holidays.
So that it something, kind of, negative for a lot of people that comes with nursing.
For me I like it but a busy day for me would be usually I only have two,
one or two patients depending on the acuity of them, how sick they are.
So a busy day would be one patient, kind of, circling the drain all day.
You're working a full 12 hours to save their life.
You don't have time to go to the bathroom.
You don't have time to eat.
You're just, you know, throwing lines in and intubating.
You know, if they arrest you do CPR.
You-- and just provide general nursing care as well.
Make sure they're clean, comfortable.
So I work in the transplant ICU so obviously we take care of everyone
that has had an abdominal transplant.
So that's everything but the heart and lungs.
UPMC does liver, kidney, small bowel, multi-visceral transplants and we used
to do hand transplants but that has, kind of, ceased for the time being.
So there's all of those patients but the transplant ICU as a name is, sort of,
a misnomer because we are the ICU for the entire section of the hospital.
So that means we get ortho patients, we get, you know,
any big belly surgery, any big belly bleed.
Just anybody from 80 years old with cancer to young people that are in liver failure.
Anybody that needs a transplant.
I'll be honest some 12 hour shifts are easier than others but the type of person to get
through a shift, I mean, you just, kind of, have to go and you have
to be self-motivated when you're a nurse.
Obviously you have a list of orders that you have to follow but part
of being a good nurse is being autonomous and, you know, knowing what you have to do
and knowing what's best for the patient and really being an advocate for the patient.