Hospital Jobs

At the bedside, registered nurses, patient care technicians, and nursing assistants. Around them sit the departments: respiratory therapy, imaging, laboratory, surgery, sterile processing, and pharmacy.

Bedside roles are usually 12 hours, days or nights, 3 a week. Support departments more often run 8 hours, and laboratory, imaging, and pharmacy staff them around the clock as well. Nights, weekends, and holidays normally carry a pay differential.

The unit is the floor and the patients on it: med-surg, ICU, emergency, operating room, labor and delivery. The same title on 2 units is 2 different jobs, since the ratios, the pace and the shift pattern all follow the unit.

The common floor is BLS for anyone with patient contact. ACLS follows in critical care, emergency, procedural areas, and respiratory therapy, PALS where children are treated, and NRP in labor and delivery and the newborn nursery. Hospital policy sets those, and a rule reaches them in specific situations: a Medicare-participating hospital has to require certification in cardiopulmonary resuscitation of staff who apply restraint or seclusion or care for a patient in it (42 CFR 482.13(f)), and New York gives an emergency service nurse a year from assignment to be current in ACLS and PALS or in training and experience equivalent to them (10 NYCRR 405.19).

Yes, usually into a role they train for: aide and transport, sterile processing, or a nurse residency if you've just qualified. After that, moving between departments is an internal application.