COVID ICU education mentorship

Non-ICU nurses were deployed to care for ICU patients during the pandemic, as the surge of patients greatly outnumbered available ICU bed and nursing capacity. An expedited course was designed to provide basic critical care education to these nurses, and then a survey was distributed to assess whether this training prepared them to provide safe care, as well as the effect of mentorship on the clinical experience of deployed nurses (RNs) who received formal ICU orientation or had direct collaboration with experienced ICU RNs during deployment. The results show that mentored nurses reported significantly greater capability to care for critically ill/hemodynamically unstable patients during their deployment. These data suggest that when non-ICU RNs were assigned to care for high-acuity patients, support from experienced nurses assuaged concerns about perceived under-preparedness and lack of competency.