Blood pressure Monitors...Recommendations

[Mayo]

i am a CNA for a Long Term Acute Care Facility. I am generally required as a duty to take BPs very frquency of our step down unit patients. I can end up taking 20-25 BPs a shift. Generally, all we have avaialble are the manuel BP cuffs. Of course, vital signs ends up taking time.

To complicate the issue, I am new as a CNa and have not developed the BP taking to perffection either, so I have my own complications. I noticed that a few of the CNAs have their own BP monitors for radial Bp and pulse. They also seem to get thru their vital signs much faster than anyone else. I was wanting to foolow in their lead of taking vital signs, but I see on the web that there is much contradiction about the wrist monitors. So my question to the nurses on the web is: if you new that your CNA was taking BPs with a wrist monitor, would you object? If so why? Furthermore, would you recomend them? If so, what brand or model would you suggest?

[PMHNP10]

I had a dental appt. last week where they took my BP from my wrist. The reading was like 90/63 or something like that. My BP is typically 130ish/80ish when I'm eating like crap and not getting my exercise for an extended period of time--being the holidays, I was a bad boy . That is a significant difference. So at the least, wrist monitors are suspect IMO. Also, I'd imagine if something happened to the pt and an emergency came up and someone recorded the BP using only a wrist monitor, the lawyers would have a field day. Sure they might be accurate some times, but would you as a nurse be willing to sacrifice your license to save a couple seconds? I can say I wouldn't.

[Shamrock, BSN, RN]

In the foggy back reaches of my brain I can remember my nursing instructors saying that the further away from the heart you are with a B/P monitor, the less accurate the results will be.

[germain]

there is no way you should have to pay fro something at work with your own money. recommend that your facility pay for the monitors themselves.

They are time savers but not as accurate.

[MikeLPN]

We have one wrist monitor at work. Read the fine print about the correct usage of the monitor, there are a lot of conditions and if you think that you can satisfy all those:roll then you might be ok with it. But if you get funny numbers then you have to do a manual recheck anyhow and then you have to document all that. I wish they worked because it would save a lot of time but they're a little too iffy and the standard for BP is still the manual cuff.

We have a nurse that relied on it too much and suspecting increasing ICP on a res with a shunt, sent her to the ER without a manual recheck:imbar