Med Surg Then and Now

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

What about alarm fatigue? Were all the patients on tele/pulse ox way back when?

No pulse ox when I started -- that's a relatively new thing -- the 90s or so. We may have had the technology earlier, but everyone wasn't on continuous pulse ox like they are now. Our 30 bed telemetry unit had 7 tele boxes -- we picked and chose who wore them. No pumps -- only enough pumps for the heparin and aminophylline drips -- everything else was dripped in with a buretrol. If you didn't set it right, you dumped in your whole hour's worth of drips in less than half that time -- or had more than half left at the end of the hour. Not much to alarm, so no alarm fatigue. Ahhhh, the good old days!