Updated June 2026 · 8 min read
Part of the ICU Emergencies Hub — browse every related guide in one place.
Brain sheets, shift notes, drug calculations, and bedside reminders. Here's what ICU nurses actually use — and what survives the floor.
A notebook that works for a graduate student is completely wrong for bedside nursing. In the ICU you need something that fits in a scrub pocket (or clipped to a lanyard), survives contact with saline, blood, and alcohol wipes, lies flat so you can write on it one-handed, and has enough structure to track drip rates, I&O totals, and family contact notes across a 12-hour shift.
I've gone through probably 40 different notebooks over the years working ICU. Here are the ones that made the cut.
This is the notebook ICU nurses recommend to each other in break rooms. All-weather paper — you can run it under water, wipe it with alcohol, and the ink doesn't smear. Fits in a scrub top chest pocket. Spiral binding means it flips open and stays flat for one-handed writing at the bedside.
The gold standard of pocket notebooks for detail-oriented nurses. Numbered pages, table of contents, two ribbon bookmarks (one for current patients, one for reference notes). The paper is thick enough that you can draw boxes, flowcharts, and drip titration grids without bleed-through. Not waterproof, but fine for break room use.
Old faithful. Every hospital supply closet in America has had a version of this. Cheap enough to toss at end of shift (HIPAA: don't take patient notes home). Top-spiral, fits anywhere. Buy a dozen, use one per shift, shred it when you leave. Zero guilt, zero fuss.
An underrated choice: the Decomp pocket book has a slightly textured cover that holds up to pocket wear, college-ruled pages with a bold left margin for quick annotations, and comes in dozens of cover designs so you can color-code by assignment (one notebook per patient pair during proning days). Made from recycled materials if that matters to you.
Most ICU nurses use a printed brain sheet — a one-page template with sections for vitals, drips, labs, I&O, and family info — folded into quarters and kept in their pocket. A notebook complements this, not replaces it. The brain sheet is your shift-at-a-glance; the notebook is for everything that doesn't fit: physician conversations, drug calculations you ran twice to be sure, your own clinical observations.
If your unit doesn't have a standard brain sheet, make one. One hour in Word or Google Docs, print 50 copies, done. Your charge nurse will thank you.
Patient names, room numbers, MRNs, diagnoses — these are PHI. A notebook with patient identifiers cannot leave the hospital. Either keep a separate non-patient notebook (dates, drug references, clinical concepts) or use the disposable approach: one cheap notebook per shift, shred it in the hospital shredder before you badge out.
The Rite in the Rain is popular partly because nurses use initials and room numbers only, no full names, so the notebook can stay with them across shifts without HIPAA concerns.
For waterproof paper (Rite in the Rain): Fisher Space Pen or any standard ballpoint. Gel pens smear. For regular paper: Pilot G2 or Zebra F-301 — smooth, reliable, clip onto the notebook spiral. Keep two in your pocket. One will run dry mid-shift and you will not have time to find another.
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