eICU

nrsjo60 · Dec 11, 2005

Does anyone work in one of these new parts of the ICU care? Was wondering...looking for opinions of this. Thanks

Hi, I work in a CVICU that has eICU. There are a team of MDs and Rns at an off site. they can view our pts with a camera on the wall and they can read the chart because it is digitalized. they a can view the pt so close that they can see the size of the pupil..they are extremly helpful especially at noc. We just push a button on the wall and they are right in the room with us so to speak.. they can walk us through a code blue or help us with just about anything...the nurses like them. some of the docs dont trust it yet...joanie in McHenry.

duchess_deni · Apr 7, 2009

If used as intended, not a bad resource, I would think--I will have the opportunity to find out beginning of the month--however from ideas coming from our manager like having us walk into the room to do an IV check with these people on the other end of the camera. My concern is how freaking stupid will I look to my patient. They want to use it like big brother watching our every move. We are a unit of experienced ICU RN's and only have two people on the unit with less than 5 years experience. I find it insulting to think that I or any of my colleages can't tell the difference between NS or D5W, give me a break. And yes they can keep an eye on one pt for you if you have another that is not doing well, however they do not take any responsibility for the pt that they are watching so guess what if the pt climbs out of bed and hits the floor it is still my responsibility all they do is tell the pt to "lay back down and don't get out of bed", then call me and if I'm wrapped up with someone unstable and doing multiple interventions I can just see myself telling my crashing pt "just a minute while I take this call". That will work real great. Instead of saving us any time they have come up with multiple "real time" charting that has to be done at the bedside. It takes me longer to do my job running back and forth between my rooms logging on to the computer, flipping through multiple screens to get to the one I need. If our IT dept. made it more user friendly that would be nice, however there are currently no plans to do that.

So it sounds like labor intensive, instead of labor saving.

I will try to keep an open mind, however the planning for all this is in the hands of only two of the nurses on our unit, no one else has been asked for ideas on how to make this a smooth change. I have a problem with that.