Not ACLS certified pulled to Tele floor...

Specialties CCU

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Specializes in Med/Surg/Bariatrics.

I'm just curious about an issue that to me seems important. I work a med-surg floor and on occasion I'm pulled to a med-surg Tele floor to which the regular Tele floor staff are ACLS certified. I am given Tele patients on this floor along with general med-surg patients. So if something happens to a Tele patient while under my care could I get into trouble for being on the floor with no ACLS certification or would it come back on the hospital or what? Thanks :)

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Specializes in Mechanical Circulatory Support.

I would think your BLS certification is sufficient.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

There is no reason for all the nurses on a tele floor to be ACLS certified. Many, many hospitals do not require tele nurses to have ACLS. In my opinion it is a huge waste of money to sent every tele nurse through ACLS. All they / you need is BLS.

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Specializes in Pediatric/Adolescent, Med-Surg.

I agree with the other comments, tele nurses do not need ACLS. Your tele pts are no doubt fairly stable, so there is no reason for ACLS.

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

a BLS-certification is sufficient. I work on a tele floor and not all of us have ACLS (including myself).

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Specializes in ICU.

wouldn't you need to understand basic rhythms. Thats part of ACLS.

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I work on a med/surg/tele floor, and I'm not tele certified or ACLS. But it would be very beneficial, and the safe thing. My employer actually won't pay to certify me in either, because I was hired for M/S, even though 75% of my patients are tele. You learn to place a lot of trust in your monitor techs and tele/ACLS certified co-workers.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
wouldn't you need to understand basic rhythms. Thats part of ACLS.

*** No, it's not. I teach ACLS as we do not teach rhythms identification. We expect our students to already be able to recognize the life threatening rhythms. We do teach what actions to take in response to the life threateing rhythms. However you are not going to learn, for example, how to recognize first degree heart block in ACLS.

I see no benifit at all of having tele nurses be ACLS certified. However a basic EKG class would be very helpful.

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Specializes in Adult ICU/PICU/NICU.

Last units I worked before I retired were PICU and NICU. If we had nurses pulled from other units they were given the most stable patients. If we didn't have enough stable patients, than that float nurse would take an expanded assignment with a regular PICU nurse....three patients on 1:2 care for example. In the rare event that these patients would go south being cared for by a nurse pulled from the floor, the regular PICU nurses would assume care of the patient and the pull nurse would in no way have to push code drugs to which she/he wasn't certified. She would help in any way she felt comfortable as we were happy to get help from the house!

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No benefit in tele nurses having ACLS? I disagree. The patients are on tele for a reason. At least the charge nurse should be ACLS certified.

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At My Hospital you have to be acls certified to work in IMC (Tele) if Your not You will be by the time your off orientation. They have tried to float people down there and they tell them "it's ok somebody will be watching your monitors." Ummm No I don't think so! How can someone watch their monitors and yours?! That's 10 monitors! And how can You trust a nurse you don't even work w/ regularly to do that? You can't! And god forbid something happens and You get pulled into court what are you going to say? "Umm someone else was watching my monitors, because I don't know how to read them." I mean come on, You need to protect your patients, your self and your license!

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

We have medical nurses pulled to our floors all the time. We tend to give them medical patients that for whatever reason, docs decided they need tele monitoring. Our charge nurse reads their required strips every 4 hours, and we watch for the major rhythm changes, the alarms etc. All us tele nurses watch for the patients. We have 14 monitors to watch, and we do a pretty good job. There is no reason for the ACLS cert for everyone. If there are any problems we encourage pull nurses to ask for help, or call a response code if help is needed. The last time I had a pull nurse, the patient was very sob and having some flash pulmonary edema, so I yelled out for a code help. The pull nurse was able to help with direction, and report off to the team and to ICU. It's just like being a nurse.

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