Acute care is when a patient receives immediate and short-term treatment for any critical or life-threatening injury, illness, and disease. It is the complete opposite of long-term inpatient treatment of chronic care services.
The purpose of acute care clinics is to boost the patient’s health and stability. They are parts of a hospital, Urgent Care clinics, and ambulatory surgical clinics.
Acute care services are practiced at:
- Emergency care
- Trauma care
- Urgent care
- Neonatal and pediatric intensive care units
- Rehabilitative care centers
- Psychiatric acute care centers
- Acute care surgery stations
What Is The Role Of An Acute Care Personnel?
In case you’re a nursing staff at such facility, your responsibility is very time-sensitive. There might be patients facing critical illnesses and injuries; hence you need to intervene immediately and disability or death, and restoring patients health to optimal levels.
In such a situation, there are high chances of a patient to sink without any warnings quickly. Therefore, nurses assigned to these facilities must be able to react during high-stress situations promptly.
You might get very emotionally high during these events, especially when the situation is a life-threatening emergency. Still, you have to remain extremely professional while practicing empathy for patients and their families.
Skills Required When Working In An Acute Care Facility?
You’ll need to use every possible skill you have, to ensure you are able to place IV for fluids and do hourly assessments with one patient. Also, make sure your second patient is given CPR to be brought back to life. Being an acute care nursing means using your critical thinking skills, where the priority is your patients based on how severe is their illness or injury.
Once the patient is feeling better, they’re discharged or shifted to the in-patient department for further treatment.
For more information on what is an acute care facility, call Emergency Hospital Systems now at 281-592-5400.