How many Secretaries/Monitor Techs are staffed on your unit?

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In my hospital, the unit secretaries double as monitor technicians. I work on a telemetry floor, and I've been more and more frequently feeling like we have been staffing too few unit secretaries/monitor techs for the number of patients on our tele monitors and floor. How many unit secretaries/monitor techs do you guys staff on your units and for how many patients?

As an example, I will be working by myself today, its an 8 hour shift, there are 26 patients admitted and 15 on tele monitors, and I already feel like this is going to make for a very unsafe 8 hours. I'm going to be admitting, discharging, calling in consults, helping doctors, assisting visitors, filing, watching tele monitors, preparing ecg strips, reporting dysrhythmias, answering phones, maintaining the tele log, maintaining our whiteboard, maintaining the admission/discharge list, all while praying nothing goes missed on my tele monitors.

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Are you the nurse or the secretary? If you are the secretary, the nurse is ultimately responsible not you. I am guessing the telemetry units have alarms which the nurses can also monitor and the you can recall any missed events. In fact in all hospitals I have worked in there are no monitor techs . I guess I am telling you not to worry.

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Specializes in oncology, MS/tele/stepdown.

Where is your charge nurse?

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Mixed tele/stepdown unit. 35 beds, 2 unit secretaries max, no tele techs. We get alarms on our phones.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Our progressive care and medical-telemetry have techs that watch 45 patients each, in addition to some UC duties. Our ICUs have no tele techs.

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2 hours ago, Ginger's Mom said:

Are you the nurse or the secretary? If you are the secretary, the nurse is ultimately responsible not you. I am guessing the telemetry units have alarms which the nurses can also monitor and the you can recall any missed events. In fact in all hospitals I have worked in there are no monitor techs . I guess I am telling you not to worry.

I am the Unit Secretary AND Monitor Tech. I’m the one responsible for watching the tele monitors and alerting the RN’s to any alarms. The RN’s do not have access to the tele monitor displays, they have to leave their hallway and physically come to the nurses station and look at the same monitors I’m watching if they want to see the patient’s rhythm. Our nurses normally hang out in the hallways they have assigned patients in, they never sit at the nurses station, unless one is breaking me.

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1 hour ago, MunoRN said:

Our progressive care and medical-telemetry have techs that watch 45 patients each, in addition to some UC duties. Our ICUs have no tele techs.

Is that 1 tech for 45 monitored patients? Even in our critical care units which are usually no more than 15 patients each, we have one US/Monitor Tech respomsible for watching monitors and doing US work.

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2 hours ago, Swellz said:

Where is your charge nurse?

My charge is busy saving the unit money by canceling the second US/MT from coming in to work during the busiest shift of the day. At my facility, the official policy is one US/MT for up to 30 patients, and the RN’s do not watch the monitors.

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IIt sounds like a flawed system, a couple of monitors in the hall way and the nurses can monitor there own patients. sounds like you are trying to lobby for another tech while in my opinion your assignment sounds very reasonable .

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At our hospital, we have 1 tele tech that watches everyone on tele, except the ER. This is usually about 45 patients, but this is her only responsibility. There is typically a US on the Med/Surg floor, but she doesn't watch tele.

At my old hospital, the tele techs (also their only job) were limited to 40 patients each to watch. They watched med, surg, and PCU. ICU and CVICU has a US/tele tech combination on each unit.

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