Continuous cardiac monitoring - legal (?) question

[Lynden74, BSN, RN]

I am responsible for up to 3 patients (to be fair they are usually not true ICU patients) and share telemetry monitoring for the med-surg unit with the other nurse in my unit - but sometimes I'm alone in the unit.  Obviously when we are providing direct patient care telemetry is unmonitored, however, alarms can be heard (unless we are in an isolation room as was often the case with COVID patients).  We have an upcoming meeting to discuss staffing concerns so I'm thinking about this more.  What would I legally be held responsible for if something happened during the time I was away from the nurses' station and unable to monitor?  When Joint Commission was last here they had an extra nurse sitting at the monitor full-time to make it look good.

[amoLucia]

Do you have any pre-existing established P&P re continuous observation? Get it in prep of your meeting.

Good opp'ty to bring this topic at the staff mtg. But keep it cool, calm & collected. Professional, not emotional. Try to keep some statistics about how often. 

Good luck.

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

Our Voceras are connected to our Telemetry monitors. It will give me an alert if a red alarm goes off in one of my patients' rooms. In addition, our in-room monitors have the ability to monitor 2 additional rooms (smaller boxes on monitor) in addition to a pop-up box when another room has a red alarm.

[HiddenAngels]

On 4/14/2022 at 4:29 PM, NICU Guy said:

Our Voceras are connected to our Telemetry monitors. It will give me an alert if a red alarm goes off in one of my patients' rooms. In addition, our in-room monitors have the ability to monitor 2 additional rooms (smaller boxes on monitor) in addition to a pop-up box when another room has a red alarm.

First, that's freaking awesome!  

Second, God forbid you are already in a crisis when a 27 beat run or something worse/worst (not sure which one)  happens and you can't stop direct patient care. This is a bit concerning with all of your responsibilities.

I like Amolucia's response, definitely bring it up as priority cool and calm.  Try to collect some strips or any kind of supporting documentation. Some managers need a visual.

[Lynden74, BSN, RN]

@amoLucia Our policy doesn't address continuous monitoring - just things such as making sure all tele patient have a working IV, who is responsible for responding, calling doc with changes, etc.   Our meeting is now postponed so I did briefly bring it up to my manager.  She responded by saying somethign to the effect that she assumes all small hospital's telemetry goes unmonitored much the same as ours.  I'm not overly worried/concerned, but it's just been more in the forefront of my mind with the recent nurse legal situations in the news.  

Thank you all for your thoughts and feedback.