The highest-acuity nursing units, where a vacancy concentrates on your sickest patients.
Adult medical and surgical patients requiring intensive monitoring, vasoactive drips, and often mechanical ventilation.
Post-operative cardiac surgery — CABG, valve replacement, transplant — plus balloon pumps, Impella and often ECMO.
Post-operative surgical and trauma patients, complex wound and drain management, frequent returns to theatre.
Sepsis, respiratory failure, DKA, hepatic and renal failure, complex medical comorbidity.
Premature and critically ill neonates, from feeder-growers through 23-week micro-preemies depending on level.
Critically ill infants through adolescents — respiratory failure, sepsis, post-operative and trauma.
Undifferentiated patients across all ages and acuities, from fast track through resuscitation.
Major mechanism injury from resuscitation through ICU and step-down, often with surgical and orthopedic involvement.
Patients too complex for med-surg but not requiring full intensive care — titratable drips, close cardiac monitoring.
Cardiac monitoring, chest pain rule-out, arrhythmia management, post-catheterization recovery.
General medical and post-surgical adults across a broad diagnostic mix.
Stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, post-craniotomy, status epilepticus.
They look interchangeable on a job description and are not. The single most common cause of a failed placement in this group is a req that names the unit but not the acuity, the ratio or the equipment — so a candidate arrives qualified on paper and unable to hold the assignment.
| Unit | Typical ratio |
|---|---|
| ICU | Typically 1:2, dropping to 1:1 for unstable or proned patients |
| CVICU | 1:1 for fresh post-op hearts, 1:2 once stable |
| SICU | Typically 1:2 |
| MICU | Typically 1:2 |
| NICU | 1:1 to 1:3 depending on acuity level |
| PICU | 1:1 to 1:2 |
| Emergency / ED | Highly variable; 1:4 typical, 1:1 in resuscitation |
| Trauma | Varies by phase of care |
| Step-Down / PCU | Typically 1:3 to 1:4 |
| Telemetry | Typically 1:4 to 1:5 |
| Med-Surg | Typically 1:5 to 1:6 |
| Neuro ICU | Typically 1:1 to 1:2 |
We ask for patient population, acuity, ratio, equipment and shift pattern at intake, plus the exact credential the unit requires rather than the job title. If you are not sure what to specify, describe the patients and we will work backwards to the credential.
Registered nursing is covered by the Nurse Licensure Compact in most of the country, so a multistate license lets a nurse work across member states without a new application. Thirteen jurisdictions sit outside it — Alaska, California, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands — and in those markets every out-of-state nurse needs a single-state license first. Those are the markets where reqs stay open longest.
Every candidate is spoken to before submittal, with licensure, certifications and unit-specific competency confirmed up front. Rates sit inside the ranges on our published cost breakdown.
Tell us the unit, the ratio and the start date.