Progressive care units: different but the same.

Progressive care units are increasingly common in hospitals in the United States. These units are often used to bridge the gap between intensive care units and medical-surgical units, with the goal of providing cost-effective, high-quality, safe care. Although progressive care units today may seem to provide care for a wide variety of patients, these patients do share certain typical features: they require a high intensity of nursing care and/or a high level of surveillance. Nurses working in progressive care units all must have certain basic competencies. Those core competencies have been identified and should form the basis for education and training of progressive care nurses.