Patients with sitters

We're supposedly going to transition to that... But for now were getting sitters from outside companies

The hospital I work for use a company and we also use CNA/PCT when they get called off on their regular shifts. I had a CNA from a different floor that sat with an ICU pt and she was horrible. Spend all morning on the phone trying to book a hotel room. When her phone started to die she asked if I had any extra chargers laying around for her phone I told her I didn't and she was upset. When she wasn't on the phone she kept coming out of the pt's room and asking the tech I was training at the time to relieve her. For lunch she was gone for an hr and a half oh and with her phone charger. Poor pt kept de sating because the sitter was too busy from keeping her from removing her NC. I had no choice but to report her to my charge nurse, AD and the tech's nurse manager. She has never returned to my floor to sit or work the floor. It's techs like her that give good techs a bad name.

All of our sitters are Nursing Student hopefuls (it counts towards the healthcare experience required to apply), so they tend to be fairly competent and work for peanuts (I think they may actually get paid in peanuts). Maybe you could arrange something with the local Nursing schools.

This is mainly just a vent, but I dread hearing in report that the patients has a sitter at bedside. Not because that means the patient is confused, but because 9/10 the sitter is crazier than the patient, completely useless, and like having a 2nd patient in the room.

in the hospital I used to work in there were a few "sitters" (thats all they did) around but mostly it was one of us aides that would get pulled off the floor to sit...the aides would toilet the patient, keep them from pulling out lines and try to redirect, the "sitters" would just sit there because they had no training beyond that...

if I had a patient that was sleeping, I would get up out of the chair, pace the room or the hallway in front of the room to stay awake - I usually was overnight sitting

My hospital used CNAs as sitters and that worked out well. However, one time we used an agency sitter instead and she was pushy and demanding. Not to mention her company let her wear white scrubs! White and ceil blue were NURSE colors where I worked, and the fact was that she was just a CNA and she was wearing nurse colors! I was a CNA at the time and it really drove me up the wall. As a CNA in my last semester of nursing school, if anyone who was not a nurse should be wearing white it should have been me!

I'm pretty sure the agency sitter's uniform made me crazier than the patient that day.

Usually our sitters are nurses. One of our staff called in to just sit.

Wow that must have been nice of your company. Our hospital wouldnt pay nurses that much just to sit. They rather use us for hard labor 

Im am definitely going to be defensive here. I was a sitter for 3 years. I was a DAMN good sitter/pct. I saved the nurses and pct's working the floor so much time, you probably have no clue. I also saved a couple of patients lives. There are definitely unskilled, lazy sitters out there, but please don't group them all together. My experience as a sitter was invaluable to me as a nurse today. I am sorry to come across so cranky. Im sure you've had bad experiences with sitters, but there are many awesome ones out there. It was downright exhausting at times, trying to keep the high fall risk pt in bed, or calming them down by therapeutic communication when they started to get very anxious.....I could go on and on. As a sitter, I'm the one who realized once a pt was not simply sleeping. I took vitals, tried waking her up while calling a nurse in the room and went down to CT with her. Turns out she was hemorrhaging again after a fall she had taken the week before. She could have gone on bleeding in her brain for hours if there was not an astute sitter in that room that morning.

The hospital I work for use a company and we also use CNA/PCT when they get called off on their regular shifts. I had a CNA from a different floor that sat with an ICU pt and she was horrible. Spend all morning on the phone trying to book a hotel room. When her phone started to die she asked if I had any extra chargers laying around for her phone I told her I didn't and she was upset. When she wasn't on the phone she kept coming out of the pt's room and asking the tech I was training at the time to relieve her. For lunch she was gone for an hr and a half oh and with her phone charger. Poor pt kept de sating because the sitter was too busy from keeping her from removing her NC. I had no choice but to report her to my charge nurse, AD and the tech's nurse manager. She has never returned to my floor to sit or work the floor. It's techs like her that give good techs a bad name.

At my hospital, that sitter would have been fired immediately. I hope you reported her during the shift because God forbid something happens to the pt because she's not doing her job, and that's YOUR licence on the line, sitter or no sitter.