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Launch your nursing career within the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute (HVTI) — one of the nation’s premier destinations for complex cardiac and vascular care. This pathway offers opportunities within both CVICU and high-acuity Progressive Care (Stepdown), allowing new graduate nurses to build a strong clinical foundation caring for some of the sickest cardiac patients outside of critical care.

About the Role:

Most new graduate nurses begin in our high-acuity Progressive Care (Stepdown) units, working alongside expert nurses, advanced practice providers, physicians, and multidisciplinary teams caring for complex cardiac patients, including:

• Post–open heart surgery patients
• Heart and lung transplant recipients
• Ventricular assist device (VAD) patients
• Medically complex cardiac populations

This is not a traditional stepdown unit. You’ll manage rapidly changing patient conditions, advanced monitoring, and complex drips in a fast-paced environment designed to accelerate clinical growth from day one.

Why HVTI Progressive Care:

For nurses interested in critical care, this is a powerful launching pad into ICU-level practice. You will build essential skills in:

• Advanced assessment and prioritization
• Clinical judgment and decision-making
• Managing high-acuity, unstable patients
• Exposure to advanced cardiac therapies and technology

Career Growth & ICU Pathway:

At Cleveland Clinic, we believe exceptional ICU nurses are built through strong clinical foundations. Many future CVICU nurses begin here, gaining the foundation needed for ICU success.

This experience provides:

• A structured pathway toward critical care readiness
• Exposure to some of the most complex cardiac patients outside of the ICU
• Opportunities for transition into CVICU roles based on performance, experience, and organizational needs

If you want more than a first nursing job — and are seeking intensity, purpose, and exposure to some of the most complex patients in healthcare — HVTI is where your career begins.

A caregiver in this position works 7:00am-7:30pm or 7:00pm-7:30am. Rotating weekends and holidays.  

A caregiver who excels in this role will:  

• Participate in a residency core curriculum based on individual learning needs.  

• Provide direct nursing care alongside a success coach.  

• Establish and/or revise priorities for patient care (acuity of need, patient preference and resource availability).  

• Respond to data indicating risk to patients’ health and initiate action to correct, reduce or prevent risk.  

• Seek supervision, consultation and assistance when unable to perform safely and independently.  

• Document in patients’ medical records.  

Minimum qualifications for the ideal future caregiver include:  

• Graduate from an accredited school of professional nursing (ADN or BSN program) 

• Current state licensure as a Registered Nurse (RN)  

• Basic Life Support (BLS) certification through the American Heart Association (AHA) or American Red Cross   

• New graduate RN OR less than one year of RN work experience 

Preferred qualifications for the ideal future caregiver include: 

• Bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) 

Physical Requirements:

• Requires full range of body motion including handling and lifting patient, manual and finger dexterity, and eye-hand coordination.
• Requires standing and walking for extended periods of time.
• Requires corrected vision and hearing to normal range.
• Requires working under stressful conditions and irregular hours.
• Exposure to communicable diseases and/or body fluids.
• Medium Work - Exerting 20 to 50 pounds of force occasionally, and/or 10 to 25 pounds of force frequently, and/or greater than negligible up to 10 pounds of force constantly to move objects.
• Physical Demand requirements are in excess of those for Light Work.

Personal Protective Equipment:

• Follows Standard Precautions using personal protective equipment as required for procedures.

The policy of Cleveland Clinic Health System and its system hospitals (Cleveland Clinic Health System) is to provide equal opportunity to all of our caregivers and applicants for employment in our drug free environment. All offers of employment are followed by testing for controlled substances.

Cleveland Clinic Health System administers an influenza prevention program. You will be required to comply with this program, which will include obtaining an influenza vaccination on an annual basis or obtaining an approved exemption.

Decisions concerning employment, transfers and promotions are made upon the basis of the best qualified candidate without regard to color, race, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, ancestry, status as a disabled or Vietnam era veteran or any other characteristic protected by law. Information provided on this application may be shared with any Cleveland Clinic Health System facility. 

If applying for a Florida position, please see the following website for more information on the background screening requirements required by the Agency of Health Care Administration: https://info.flclearinghouse.com/

Please review the Equal Employment Opportunity poster. 

Cleveland Clinic is pleased to be an equal employment opportunity employer.