can a med-surg nurse work in telemetry?

[Ms.RN]

I've been working in the med-surg unit and I have never been oriented or worked at the telemetry unit. The other day I was being asked if I can work in a telemetry unit. So i'm wondering, is telemetry unit almost the same as the med-surg unit? Do you think its safe for med-surge nurse to work in telemetry unit wihtout any training?

[TriciaJ, RN]

When I floated from M/S to tele, I would tell the charge nurse I didn't know anything about hearts and he/she would babysit my tele pager. I was also assigned to pts who were not too acute so ended up doing a lot of discharging.

Be assertive and don't accept anything out of your league.

[Jenni811, RN]

yes, you can. They may need to just schedule you some easier patients. I.e patients without drips.

I work on a cardiac floor (basically a tele unit). we had an ortho nurse float up to our unit. We had to assign her patients that were something she might be comfortable with. So she wasn't able to get any cardiac surgery patients. We had to give her a patient that was on dilt drip, but we didn't expect her to know titration orders, so we gave her a resource person to go to with questions about the drip or whatever.

We also didn't expect her to read the tele strips every 4 hours, so we did them for her and put them in the patients chart.

other than that, patients are not much different. don't let the drips scare you, use your resources with them if you have questions.

[DookieMeisterRN]

yes, you can. They may need to just schedule you some easier patients. I.e patients without drips.

I work on a cardiac floor (basically a tele unit). we had an ortho nurse float up to our unit. We had to assign her patients that were something she might be comfortable with. So she wasn't able to get any cardiac surgery patients. We had to give her a patient that was on dilt drip, but we didn't expect her to know titration orders, so we gave her a resource person to go to with questions about the drip or whatever.

We also didn't expect her to read the tele strips every 4 hours, so we did them for her and put them in the patients chart.

other than that, patients are not much different. don't let the drips scare you, use your resources with them if you have questions.

The truth is that staffing and charge nurses should not put a float in that position AT ALL. If you don't know, ortho is verrry different from cardiac and it's very scary to assume a stable cardiac pt will stay that way.

If my family member was on a cardiac unit I would definitely want a telemetry trained nurse caring for my loved one, not someone who may not know what she doesn't know. JMHO.

[squatmunkie_RN]

Yes. You just should not take the pt's on drips like Cardene, Amiodarone, Cardizem...ect. We get alot of CHF pt's on our tele floor pt's like that you could take. So, if the charge nurse is good in pt assignment you'd do fine.

[MinnieMomRN]

Put me in the camp with the "no" people. Yes, we are all a team and help each other out, but ultimately YOU are responsible for your patient. You need to know what to do for a change in rhythm, and reading the rhythms are not always as straight forward as they are in the text books. You need an orientation and consistent practice -- not gained in 1 floated shift. Besides, you are getting floated because that floor is short-staffed, not because they are planning on teaching you. In my hospital in order to take tele patients, you need to be ACLS certified, and have taken and passed the hospital's tele course. That's the minimum, and even at that we slowly add complexity -- and not a full patient load. It's not rocket science, but you DO need an orientation.