Tympanic temps in ICU?

[erinnRN]

I just changed jobs from a Level I trauma ICU to a small community hospital ICU. Among other questionable practices, I notice that 100 percent of the temps they take are tympanic. I asked the person orienting me where are the oral or rectal thermometers and she couldn't even find one. In all of my previous units we never used tympanic, or only to check vitals during blood. Do other ICU's use tympanic temps?

Thanks

[CRNAsoon]

... Do other ICU's use tympanic temps?

My unit uses oral.

[begalli]

I use oral, axillary, bladder (through foley), core (with a swan), or sometimes a continuous rectal temp (via a probe inserted and left in place), but I've never used tympanic.

[zambezi, BSN, RN]

We use tympanic...we do have oral available...of course, if they have a swan we use that...if the patient gets a foley in the er they come up with temperature sensing probes that we can (but don't usually) use...I will use a rectal probe if I am using a cooling blanket but that is the only time (that's come up anyway). We recently had a published study done comparing swans, oral, axillary, and tympanic and if I recall there wasn't much difference (but truthfully, I can't really remember the exact results at this time so when I have time I'll look it up....)

I'd say we are at about 95% typmanic.

edited to add: here is an abstract for the article...http://brn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/117

[LilRedRN1973]

In my unit, we use rectal probes that are left in place, foley temp, tympanic (our least favorite method), swans should the patients have one inserted, and our newest favorite, temporal artery thermometers. Of course, those are the ones that always "disappear" from our unit and make their way to other parts of the hospital!!

Melanie

[Celia M, ASN, RN]

We were using tympanic and just switched to the Temporal artery thermometers. We did a little study and found that they detected fevers in patients more frequently than the tympanic. We love them

[andrea.nz]

We do have tympanic but very few nurses will use them prefering axilla or rectal. Our intensivist prefer we dont use them as there is such a discrepency between readings.

[LindaMarie76]

We use tympanics in our ICU. For a while we stopped using them and switched to these new fangled objects that looked like something on Star Wars. I wonder if it is the temporal thermometers some others mentioned. I doubt it though because these funky looking thermometers were inaccurate and everyone in the hospital complained. We do have one or two oral/rectal thermometers in the unit and some of us will use them when we disagree with the tympanic reading. Personally....I check their tympanic temp and then use my hand to verify the reading. If I disagree with the tympanic thermometer, I'll go and perform an oral/axillary/rectal. :)

[PCloudy]

We used to have typanic thermometers in our ICU but it was noted that there was a huge amount of user variance. If the thermometer is not positioned just right, the reading was off. I notice that many people are not that concerned about temp. They take an axillary temp and get, say a 96 F, and chart that. I have come along right behind them and got a very different reading. You just have to use your good sense. When in doubt, check it out - try a different hole.

[RNforLongTime]

Our Intensivists don't like us to use tympanic thermometers either. We use mostly oral temps. If the pt has a CritiCore Foley in place (usually in our Traumas and post-op CABG pt's) then we'll use that. IF they have a swan, then we'll use the reading from that. Personally, I don't like the tympanic readings. I don't find them to be accurate.