Any hospital units that DON'T use telemetry?

amzyRN · Mar 2, 2015

I work on a tele floor and I like to have my patient on a monitor. Infact, I'd prefer to have all my patients on a monitor (even if I have a med/surg) patient. It's like an extra check. Monitors save a lot of lives. You can catch the rhythm disturbances early and prevent more deaths.

RNnewbie2014 · Mar 2, 2015

My unit does not use telemetry.. We have 4 floors with 33 beds that do though.. Perhaps 5.. If they need telemetry, they are transferred. I don't know how well I would like telemetry either.. One of our biggest floors is 4T.. And there are code blue's a lot.. I am on a med surg floor.. Honestly, I feel like with cardiac monitored patient's, the nurses should have less patient's.. but that is not the case; therefore, I do not think I would want to work on a tele floor in my hospital.. It's always 1 nurse to 7 patients except in critical care areas of course.. And the floors are generally not fully staffedâ€¦ High turn over rates really.. Esp on the cardiac floors

Aliareza, BSN · Mar 2, 2015

The frightening thing about allowing nurses to interpret the strip is that things can be missed. When I worked on a tele floor, a patient started throwing very frequent PVC's and had 3 second runs of v-tach. The strip we got didn't show the v-tach or the PVC's. However, the monitor tech saw it and we were able to get the patient to the unit. He kept having runs of v-tach on the unit. If we had relied on the 6 sec strip only, we would have missed the v-tach.

From what I understand, that's basically how theirs works, too. They get a 6 second strip each shift that goes into the chart with an interpretation on it and the nurse's signature. What about the other 43,194 seconds of that shift where their rhythms aren't being interpreted? When you phrase it with those numbers, the ridiculous nature of it shines clearly.

However, it does kind of cover the nurse's butt. In the case you stated, wouldn't the nurse be able to claim there was no way for her to know there was anything wrong since the strip she was told to analyze and sign off on didn't show anything at all?

Sad when administrative policy is more worried about CYA than actual patient care :/.