Cardiac drips on a med/surg floor

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

If you hang dobutamine, dopamine, nitro, and cardizem on your floor what is your nurse to patient ratio?

Do you titrate?

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

0:0 because that patient is getting transferred to ICU. Any patient on any vasoactive drip automatically buys a transfer to critical care. The only drip that doesn't require ICU is Breviblock.

[Double Dunker]

We only hang cardizem and we don't titrate it. Ratio is 1:4.

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

Our drips used to go to icu, but will now be on our floor with a 1:5 ratio. I guess if we titrate they go to the unit. Placing these pts on the floor with no option of titration means we will be playing musical beds. Ugh.

[Double Dunker]

My experience is that the cardizem drips aren't too bad and very few have to be transferred for titration. I'd take a cardizem drip over an insulin drip any day. Now those are time consuming. :***:

[BSN16]

our post floor will take amio and cardizem drips. They don't titrate. but it's usually just running at the minimum because we can't get the patient off the last .05 and they are medically stable enough and we need the bed in the icu

[DiscGolfNurse, BSN]

No cardiac drips or IV cardiac meds on our med/surg floor. Either a tele unit for IV cardiac meds or ICU for cardiac drips.

[whichone'spink, BSN, RN]

Eeek! At my facility, cardizem is titratable and it goes to PCU. Same for nitro. Dobutamine also goes to PCU as long as you don't have to titrate. Other drips include heparin, lasix, bumex, nicardipine, and nipride. Heparin is the only one that is okay for med-surg. Lasix and Bumex is questionable. Nicardipine and nipride go to ICU.

[Wrench Party]

On tele/stepdown: we take nitro, Lasix, dobutamine, dopamine, insulin, heparin, milrinone, Cardizem, amio. We'll titrate heparin and insulin according to results, all other drips usually get rate changed by LIP approval.