How Many Patients Do Your Monitor Tech's Watch?

Nurses General Nursing

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I am a Monitor Tech. that oversees the heart rhythms of up to 34 patients at a time. This often includeds o2 sat's. I am also part of a committe to decide the new procedures needed as my two units combine all the patients at one console. If both my units are full, the MT's will be watching up to 63 patients, with several o2 sat needs as well.

My main concern for now is "How much can a monitor tech. safely monitor?". I am wanting to know if anyone has a MT on their unit, and how many pt's do they monitor at one time? I really want to get a feel for what has been done and what can be done. We want to eliminate the human error factor as much as possible.

Any input on what you have observed will be invaluable info. for me and greatly appreciated.

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Specializes in Peds Cardiology,Peds Neuro,Pedi ER,PICU, IV Jedi.

If you want to eliminate the error factor then you need to cut that number that you're having to watch by two thirds. There is no reason that ONE person should have to watch anywhere near 60 some patients. Can you say DANGEROUS?? I'll tell you what my lawyer will say..."write us a big check." And he's right. I have been a monitor tech (one of my many talents) for many years and we don't ever have more than 22 at one time, and they're all on this floor - no one is monitored on other floors by us per the Cardiology Chief. There is just way too much of a margin for error when you're monitoring other floors in addition to your own. The only 1:1 monitoring outside my floor is done in ICU.

We too are responsible for monitoring sats, and I work in pediatric cardiology, where it is not uncommon to see patients who normally sat 65-75%. There's wayyy too much to keep track of to worry about other floors in addition to my own.

You can NOT ensure quality of care and monitor that many patients effectively with only one person. That's asking for serious trouble.

vamedic4

Blunt but true.;)

1 Votes
Specializes in OB, M/S, HH, Medical Imaging RN.

How Many Patients Do Your Monitor Tech's Watch?

None! We don't have a monitor tech! The charge nurse (me) watches 30 Telemetry's at a time while trying to do 10 other things at once. So glad I'm now outta there...

Specializes in ICU.

I used to be a monitor tech (pre nursing) on the tele floor and the ICU (pre bedside monitor age in ICU.) Each tech would watch up to 45 pts each with ICU pts. among them. We would set lower limits to help us catch things earlier.

Specializes in icu, er, transplant, case management, ps.
I am a Monitor Tech. that oversees the heart rhythms of up to 34 patients at a time. This often includeds o2 sat's. I am also part of a committe to decide the new procedures needed as my two units combine all the patients at one console. If both my units are full, the MT's will be watching up to 63 patients, with several o2 sat needs as well.

My main concern for now is "How much can a monitor tech. safely monitor?". I am wanting to know if anyone has a MT on their unit, and how many pt's do they monitor at one time? I really want to get a feel for what has been done and what can be done. We want to eliminate the human error factor as much as possible.

Any input on what you have observed will be invaluable info. for me and greatly appreciated.

-.¸¸.-´-`-.¸.-´-`-...¸>

. , . .-´-`-.. >

When I was charge nurse, my monitor tech kept an eye on ten patients. When I went into the hospital, several years ago, and was on tele, the monitor tech was an LPN, who monitored eight patients. There were three to four of them monitoring all tele patients in our 250 bed hospital, with a Clinical Nurse Specialist who oversaw them and took care of any problems.

Woody

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

i'm an rn but have done ot as a monitor tech in two different jobs. in the first job, as charge nurse of the micu, we'd have to watch the monitors for our unit, the stepdown unit and up to three icus in small, community hospitals. we had 25 channels to watch. it was doable. we had firefighters moonlighting as monitor techs, and sometimes when they called in sick, one of the rns would watch the monitors. if there was a shift without monitor tech coverage, an rn could sign up to work it as ot.

when i injured my knees about ten years ago, they let me work as a monitor tech in the stepdown unit. there, i watched 30-35 monitors: the 30 bed stepdown unit which almost never had an empty bed for more than an hour at a time, and up to five monitors for the dialysis unit which sometimes monitored unstable patients on dialysis. if the patient was really unstable, they'd have an icu nurse go downstairs to do the dialysis and watch the monitor, but the monitor tech still had to analzye and post the strips.

Specializes in Intensive Care and Cardiology.

Our monitor tech on Telemetry watches 25 patients and has to "play" secretary as well from 11p to 7a along with that.

Specializes in LTC, med-surg, critial care.

We have techs on the second (telemetry) and third floor (ICCU) of the hospital. I work on the fourth floor (ortho/med/surg). I've gone down to pick up the tele box once and I saw one person staring at the screen, pushing buttons left and right but I'm not sure how many patients were on there.

They only call me when a lead is off, to check on a patient or "Is the monitor even on them?"

Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

If ICU is full and all the tele's are in use, I can have up to 22 patients to be watched, strips posted, etc. But if that's the case they will have someone sitting at the desk to just monitor and help with the paperwork, so I can keep up with my patients.

If ICU's anything other than full, we'll be doing patient care and watching monitors too. Alarm usage depends, for me, on what I'm doing. If I'm in and out of patients rooms mostly, I don't fiddle with the limits too much 'cause I need the alarms. If I'm sitting on my butt watching tele, I don't like as much doggone noise and will reset limits if I'm satisfied that the patients are okay. (this means I bug the crap out of the nurse and she's satisfied, or the charge nurse is handling whatever it is.)

Last week, for example, I found out that U waves make the ST alarms go off... there was no ST problem, the computer just didn't know what else to do with it.

I monitor 3 patients per day

Are you saying that one person monitors 60 people?? That's nuts!

One place I worked tele had a tech and they monitored up to 30 pts at a time.

I did agency at one place and there was no tech. It was more of a "whoever happens to be standing there" monitoring. Kind of a scarey situation in a 30+ bed unit. I only went there one week.

Thank you for your input! What kind of environment were these monitors in? Private room off to the side or in the middle of the nurses station or...?

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