Do your nurses assume total care for ICU patients

[motherofbosh]

In your department do the nurses assume total care for ICU or ED/ICU boarders that come to the department for angio etc?

[KYCFNP]

I've worked at 2 hospitals in my nursing career. The first, was in an ICU, in which we cared for highly acute patients, and traveled with them everywhere. I moved to a rural hospital, have been there for about 2 years, and the ICU nurses refuse to come with their patients. It's like pulling teeth even if we are short-staffed to have them help transport. I myself, having been a previous ICU nurse, wouldn't have wanted someone else to assume total care of my patient that knew nothing about them or what had been going on. The acuity is not as severe at this hospital, given some of them could actually walk down to the Radiology department for their stress test, but it's just really hard to deal with. We have 5 RN's employed in our department, that take care of all nuclear imaging/stress tests, all CT/MRI transports for ICU patients, all cath lab and interventional radiology procedures, and all para/thora/ultrasound interventional radiology procedures. I wish I could find some resources about the importance of continuity of care in these patients. What it runs into for us, is many days we do not even get to eat lunch, and the patient's nurse will have already eaten breakfast AND lunch, and not even help us unhook the patient for transport or reconnect them when we get backk. It's so frustrating.