Prepare for Stepdown with confidence

What your Stepdown 90-day path covers

• ✓What makes a patient a progressive care patient
• ✓Discharge from intensive care and the first twenty-four hours
• ✓Triage, capacity and deciding who gets the bed
• ✓Ratios, workload and the acuity the number hides
• ✓Titratable vasoactives at 1:3: what changes when the nurse has three patients
• ✓Vasopressors and inotropes: mechanism, titration and the peripheral question
• ✓Antiarrhythmic, antihypertensive and sedative infusions on the unit
• ✓Infusion safety architecture: pumps, checks and where they fail
• ✓High-flow nasal oxygen: mechanism, escalation and the ROX index
• ✓Noninvasive ventilation: selecting, setting and knowing when it has failed
• ✓Tracheostomy on the progressive care unit
• ✓Ventilator liberation and the patient who arrives still weaning
• ✓Post-intensive care syndrome: what the ICU left behind
• ✓ICU-acquired weakness and early mobility on the unit
• ✓Delirium after critical illness
• ✓Nutrition, refeeding and swallowing after intensive care
• ✓Central venous access on a non-ICU unit: selection, care and infection
• ✓Chest tubes and surgical drains
• ✓Arterial lines, enteral access and the devices that follow a patient down
• ✓Early warning scores and what they miss
• ✓The escalation conversation: calling back up
• ✓Failure to rescue: the anatomy of a delayed transfer
• ✓Cardiac arrest and peri-arrest on a unit without an intensivist
• ✓The high-risk surgical patient on stepdown
• ✓Thoracic, vascular and free-flap recovery
• ✓Postoperative complications: bleeding, ileus, leak and the deteriorating abdomen
• ✓Sepsis on the progressive care unit
• ✓Acute kidney injury and the fluid decision
• ✓Gastrointestinal bleeding and hepatic decompensation
• ✓Glycemic emergencies and electrolyte instability
• ✓The post-stroke and post-craniotomy patient
• ✓Spinal cord injury and neuromuscular respiratory failure
• ✓Handoff across levels of care
• ✓Advocacy, moral distress and clinical inquiry in transitional care

Start with a free gap analysis

Before you study anything, AscendRN's gap analysis shows you exactly where you stand across the ten competencies that matter for stepdown — patient assessment, pharmacology, prioritization, and more. You find your gaps here, in minutes, instead of at the bedside. Then your path adapts to close them.

Free to start. No card required.

Join thousands of nurses preparing for their specialty on AscendRN.