Bed bath with telemetry monitor?

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I gave my first bed bath this week as a nursing student. My patient had a telemetry monitor on but I was not sure what to do with it while bathing. Can it get wet? Am I allowed to disconnect it? Do i just take off the patches?? What do you normally do?

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Check with the nurse. In many facilities, EKG patch sites need to be rotated anyway for skin care reasons. A daily bed bath would be a good time to do that and assess the skin under the currently used patches.

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Yea I remove the monitor and patches for the bath. I call tele and tell them it has been removed temporarily so they don't freak. After the bath just replace the pads and hook the monitor back up. Call tele and let them know the patient is hooked back up.

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Specializes in Telemetry.

Just wait til you have a tele patient with a really hairy chest. Most of the time the patches won't stick (and we had no electric trimmer to use for this) or those that did stick tended to rip out tufts of hair wheb removed. You might see if the supply closet has the prep pads that make skin a little tacky and easier for patches to adhere, and adhesive removal patches to break down the adhesive and make them easier to remove.

Five years of tele and those darn patches and leads were often the bane of my existence. Lol

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