anyone have an e ICU?

kissmekate · Mar 20, 2006

do you have one and how has it benefitted your pts and nurses?
does snyone work in one? what do you trend? what is the workload like?
tia!

I do--we don't use them. I work in CVICU and the surgeons want us to call only them--no matter what time.

The other ICU's use them though. I can't say I have heard anything good or bad. It is funny, they will chime in 5-10 minutes AFTER we already were taking care of a problem.

It hasn't changed our staffing. We are 1-1 or 1-2.

Trauma Columnist · Mar 20, 2006

Okay, I gotta ask because I'm not familar with this concept. What is it? Thanks for the info.

ParrotHeadRN · Mar 20, 2006

Trauma - eICU is (supposed to be) an electronic extension of an ICU. My unit is piloting eICU at my facility, and the actual eICU is offsite. eICU is staffed with both nurses and doctors who monitor the patients the same way we do. They use the same tele monitors that we do and they also have cameras in each room that they can turn on whenever they wish. When a patient is admitted, the attending doc chooses what level of care they wish the eICU docs to provide, anywhere from simply watching and notifying us if something is wrong to giving us orders if needed. So far I've never seen it used above the monitoring level. I suppose in theory if a patient crashed we could use them, but we are a teaching hospital and there is always an attending or resident around.

Honestly, they don't contribute very much. I agree with kissmekate, they are usually a day late and a dollar short. It seems to me it is more of a customer service ploy than anything. They can tell patients and families that we offer an even greater level of monitoring than other ICUs. The theory is that they can see what is going on sooner than we can and if we are tied up with another patient, they will notify us. But my coworkers are great about helping out and I've not had a time that I didn't know what was going on first. Our computer flowsheet charting is also hooked with eICU, which I find to be a great nuisance. The other night I had a pt with acute renal failure who consistently had a low output and every time I tried to chart, an alert would pop up. Which to me seems ridiculous. I KNOW urine output is low, *I'M* the one that charted it! They also called to tell me there was a low BP on the same patient. I was already in the room taking care of it. And I've heard other nurses complain that they start getting calls around 6, when eICU is trying to wrap up the shift the same way we are.

Several coworkers I have spoken to feel that eICU will not be introduced to the rest of the hospital as it isn't used very much, but that we are stuck with it because of the expense of initiating it. (Computer programs, cameras, off site unit, etc.) I also feel sorry for the nurses who staff the eICU. I think they must be SO bored! The docs too, for that matter. It just occurred to me to wonder if they make more than me. I guess that if they do expand to the other units they would have more to do.

I can think of a myriad of better ways to spend so much money. They could offer retention bonuses, attendance bonuses, more money. They could attract and keep bedside nurses and improve patient care that way. Just my $0.02.