Nurse monitored Tele only, no tech?

[JustKeepSmiling, ADN, BSN, RN]

Hoping general nursing forum will reach a variety of nurses who interact with telemetry for this question.

When I first started as a tele nurse, we had monitor techs on our unit with the big tele screens to look at too. Now we use remote monitoring and only critical care areas get screens to look at in addition to the remote techs.

This is frustrating because to see my patient's tele I have to log in and wait for current activity to load (sometimes as long as a minute) and pull up the history. Or rely on calling the monitor tech and hoping they are giving me the right info until we can see it on our end or get a 12 lead. For instance pt c/o chest pain, call MT at bedside to ask if any changes while another nurse grabs lifepak/logs in to system.

I'm ACLS certified, have taken EKG courses and am experienced in stress tests.

So my question is this: anyone work with telemetry patients and are solely responsible for monitoring? No on unit or remote tech?

[nlitened]

This is becoming more and more common. With technology, tele alarms are sent directly to the nurse's phone...no need for a monitor tech. Though the monitors are kept at the nurses station. Have never heard of anyone having to log in to see tele.

The hospital I was working at is getting this new technology. I saw the writing on the wall and quit to go to nursing school. But yes, more and more hospitals are no longer using monitor techs.

[flyersfan88]

We are solely responsible. Never had a tech to monitor. We have our screens throughout the unit and pagers that go off when one of our alarms does. The pager tells you the HR/arrhythmia.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

My hospital has step down units and ICU with bedside cardiac monitoring. I work on one of them. The nurse caring for those patients is responsible for monitoring those. Obviously, every nurse is keeping half an eye on the monitor whenever they're near the desk, though. The alarms are loud so you're unlikely to not hear it. If you're in another room and there's an alarm going off in one room, the room you're in's monitor will display the room number that is alarming and you have the option to switch to that display with a password. Love that set up. Really helps if you hear the monitor going off and you're stuck in an isolation room to know if you need to leave now, or if it can wait a few minutes while you finish up.

Our med surg units have remote tele. They do not monitor the telemetry at all on the unit. All of it goes to a central monitor on one of the step down units. That unit usually has a telemetry tech during the day and the charge nurse watches it at night.

[MatrixRn]

During the course of time that I worked Telemetry the status of the monitor techs changed. When I first started on the floor, we had a tech monitor for day and night shift [we did 12 hour shifts]. After about a year, we lost the night tech. Then next we lost the tech on the weekends. To be frank, we lost the techs at night, because they could not fill the role, and it was the same for the weekend. The job was advertised....just could not get any takers.

I no longer work on that floor but from talking to my fellow nurses I know they no longer use a monitor tech at all. They still have telemetry on the floor, but it is solely the RNs duty at this point.

[dah doh, BSN, RN]

We are solely responsible. Never had a tech to monitor. We have our screens throughout the unit and pagers that go off when one of our alarms does. The pager tells you the HR/arrhythmia.

When I was a tele nurse, this what I dealt with. There were a lot of false pages that we had to walk to the monitors at the monitor area to check out the alarm.

The last few years have introduced smart phones that can pick up the tele monitoring on some of the units.

Although, occasionally they have delays in the tele units with the cardiac alarms triggering the pagers in a timely manner so occasionally they send ICU nurses to act as monitor techs. A very cushy but boring shift indeed!

[JustKeepSmiling, ADN, BSN, RN]

Thanks for the feedback!

I was curious because I'm going into a new job with no remote monitoring. After being used to having it, will feel different being solely responsible.