How many tele techs does your unit use?

I worked on a Cardiopulmonary Unit that had 30 pts. We had 4 techs, unless the censes was low then of course either someone was cancelled or pulled to another unit. Now donot get me wrong we have had to work with 2 -30pts before and it was very busy. But if you have good,strong techs it always worked out. Our techs were Tech II's, so we were running around like crazy,and if they needed a EKG anywhere in the Hosp, we had to go take care of it. I hope this is somewhat helpful.

Any of you out there who work on a Tele, PCU or IMCU unit that uses remote telemetry monitoring... I am trying to find out what your facility standards are for the telemetry tech as far as what is the max. # of patients that they can monitor before a second tech must be added? Are there any "standards" out there that your facility goes by?

Thanks!

I have worked ICU, CCU, ED and CTCU and never had a "tele tech". As a nurse we were responsible to watch the monitors for our patients and to cover another nurse when they or I became busy and had to away from the monitors. I would not want to take the word of an unlicensed and possibly undertrained person when I have to deliver some very dangerous medications. I have heard of some very competent "techs" but my gut tells me a trained RN or tele trained LPN is best.

Well, just to let you know not every place is the same. I have worked in many different hosp and they have what they call "MONITOR TECHS" that all they do is watch the monitors. These particular people are NOT RN's or LPN's. They have had the training to watch for any abnormal rhythms. The RN's also carry pagers that send off alarms when there is any type of abnormalities. Even when the batteries are low in the heart monitors the pagers go off. Maybe where you work the RN's are able to sit and watch the monitors, but where I am from they sure do not have the time to sit in front of a monitor and watch rhythms.

I have worked ICU, CCU, ED and CTCU and never had a "tele tech". As a nurse we were responsible to watch the monitors for our patients and to cover another nurse when they or I became busy and had to away from the monitors. I would not want to take the word of an unlicensed and possibly undertrained person when I have to deliver some very dangerous medications. I have heard of some very competent "techs" but my gut tells me a trained RN or tele trained LPN is best.

I saw a similar post to this one somewhere but i was a cna on a cardiac care unit. After three months of working there, you had the option to take a telemetry course (bacis, not 12 lead EKG) and could be certified as a telemetry tech. We watched our unit (46 beds) plus about 10-20 more pts. on rehab, overflow med-surg, etc. We pulled strips on everyone q4 in addition to charting abnormalities. If the patient was a new admit on tele, we could measure it and identify the rhythm. We paged the nurse everytime the rhythm changed or when they had abnormalities. We were in charge of the signatures of the nurses and before our shift was over we had to make sure that every nurse had seen there tele strips and signed every charting we made. We always had two tele techs per shift and all of us were cna's. We were in charge of documenting codes, copying charts to send to the other units, contacting other parts of the hospital that had tele equipment, etc. The nurse was the one who did something about it, we just documented it. (I loved telemetry and identifying the blocks, bigeminy, trigeminy, fib, flutter...It was so fun and really helped me understand the heart. I'm so glad they trained us to do that:p)

Keely

I have to agree with you, the best thing I could have done was taking the additional training to become a Tech II. The techs on my unit had to know 12 leads. Since getting my training I have been able to help other techs learn the different rhythms. I have even helped RN'S. There are so many nurses that think just because we (CNA's,Nurse TECh II) donot have a RN behind our name we know nothing. Well let me be the first to inform any nurse that I have personally had to show a few RN's some basics straight out of Fundamentials.

Actually, our monitor or tele techs are trained in a two day basic EKG class and then go back for another one day advanced class that focuses on blocks, lethal rhythms, etc. Usually these people have a background as EMT / paramedic or have done this kind of work before. If we have a CNA who is in nursing school - or student nurse, they can take the class as well. They have a test they must pass with a 90% and cannot miss any lethal rhythms. They do a great job!

Our IMCU has 21 beds monitored by remote telemetry (not bedside monitors in the ICU - they do not have a tele tech and we do not watch their patients). We also monitor patients on Med/Surg who need telemetry monitoring.

My question was, once you get to a certain number of patients, at what point, is a second monitor tech necessary? I am trying to find out if there are any "standards" out there?

I've worked several tele units throughout the South and I've never seen any consistency. From one Monitor Tech watching up to 50 monitors to 3 MT's jointly watching no more than 35 monitors. I think 20-30 monitors is all the average person can reasonably monitor but that's just an opinion.

I think it is reasonable to watch 30-40 pts. per person. When we have five screens full of rhythms it's so hard to keep track of them all, notice patterns, rhythm changes, etc. It's about patient safety. The lower the ratio, the better.

Keely

"I have to agree with you, the best thing I could have done was taking the additional training to become a Tech II. The techs on my unit had to know 12 leads. Since getting my training I have been able to help other techs learn the different rhythms. I have even helped RN'S. There are so many nurses that think just because we (CNA's,Nurse TECh II) donot have a RN behind our name we know nothing. Well let me be the first to inform any nurse that I have personally had to show a few RN's some basics straight out of Fundamentials." sweet4dalejr

I have had those experiences too. I was working with a doctor and a new admit came in with a very obvious second degree type 1 (weinchebach) and the doctor kept arguing with me that it was just sinus rhythm and I was just a dumb tech who didn't know how to read tele. Then, this really spunky nurse I worked with interrupted and showed the doctor why I was right (how the p wave gets longer and then drops which I TRIED TO SHOW HIM but he wouldn't listen.) In the end, he felt like a dumb*** and I felt very good about myself....

Keely