Neuroscience nursing at Barnes-Jewish Hospital offers rewarding and challenging opportunities on two Neuro Medicine floors, a Neurosurgical Step Down unit as well as a 20-bed Neuro Intensive Care Unit. As a major teaching hospital, we’re continually advancing the neurosciences. Ranked as one of the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, we offer some of the most advanced treatments available to resolve or manage conditions ranging from strokes to sub-acute hematomas, aneurysms to neuro-muscular diseases.
THE BEST IN NEUROLOGY AND NEUROSURGERY NURSING
As a major teaching hospital, Barnes-Jewish is continually advancing the neurosciences, and our nurses have many opportunities to learn new skills and continually develop their career paths.
Leading recipients of research funds from the National Institute of Health, our neurological and neurosurgical departments have the resources and technologies in place to provide the highest quality care today…and to develop treatments that can take it into the future. Plus, our affiliation with Washington University School of Medicine ensures that you’ll work with the newest and most advanced technology available, and have tremendous opportunities to share knowledge with your peers, and even take on new studies that can advance your understanding…and your career.
In these areas, nurses experience something new every day:
Neuro Medicine
As a Neuro Medicine nurse, you will witness nursing floors full of activity and energy. Here, nurses are highly skilled, compassionate individuals who care for neurology and neurosurgery patients with neurological disorders such as stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and neuropathies. In a multidisciplinary environment, nurses are part of a team that ensures that patients and their family members receive optimal care. Resources available for nursing staff include a nurse educator, a clinical nurse specialist and a rehab specialist for training and development. Neuro Medicine nurses also participate in unit specific and hospital committees.
Neurosurgical Step Down
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The Stroke Center of Excellence was the first center certified by the Joint Commission as a Primary Stroke Center in the St. Louis region. When Joint Commission certified the Center of Excellence in Epilepsy, this was one of only three in the nation. As a result of these certifications, nurses receive additional education and training in both areas. Additionally, nurses are encouraged to become certified as neuroscience nurses (CNRN).
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The Neurosurgical Step Down is a newly remodeled, 21-bed combined nursing unit (6 fully monitored step-down beds) that cares for routine surgical and step-down patients. Although acute and chronic pain management has always been a large part of patient care, nurses on this unit have recently begun to explore new pain management techniques for patients.
Many resources are available to nurses on this unit, including a Neuro Nurse Practitioner, a full-time lead charge nurse and nurse educator. Educational opportunities are highly encouraged and a few examples include a Surgical Services fellowship, unit-specific Step Down classes and ACLS certification. Nurses on this unit receive additional education and training in stroke and epilepsy.
Nurses serve a critical role in the multidisciplinary care of patients and round hourly with physicians. In a continued effort to provide excellence in patient care, this nursing staff is highly involved in its unit-based joint practice team.
Neuro ICU
Approximately 1,700 patients are admitted to the Neuro ICU each year, one the nation’s largest and most sophisticated intensive care units. Here, many nurses are certified and highly trained in this specialty area and practice a high level of intellectual partnership with team members — board-certified neuro intensivists, fellows, residents and pharmacists. The unit’s low patient-nurse ratio results in the ability to practice the highest level of nursing care. The unit provides state-of-the-art equipment, including a dedicated research PET scanner and one of the few advanced portable CT scanners in the country. Because this ICU has one the hospital’s highest organ donation rates, nurses are actively involved in the organ donation process.
Working with neurology patients is an ever-changing and truly rewarding experience.
Whether you are a new nursing graduate or an experienced RN, you’ll find the neurosciences an exciting place to build your career.