angel110600

How do you like the ratios? Do they work for you? Yeah, this is a "magnet" hospital but I see it fading fast, I am really wanting to have this ratio, and I am going to continue to push for it. ~Lisa

Our average is 30mins! Our fastest is 17 min! It's crazy!

HA HA HA! I do that a lot! COUGH COUGH COUGH!

Hi I am a cath lab RN with a specialty in electrophysiology! I love it, love it. I came straight from the floor to EP first. I actually had to study A LOT! I live in Iowa. We are in the top 1% for drug coated stent placement. We have surgical back up but hardly use it! We have 8 cath labs with two lab having bi-plane technology. We perform angiograms, right heart caths, stent placements, angioplasty, rotoblader, thrombolectomy, PTA's, vena cava filters, IABP instertion and change outs,ICD's, pacemakers, bi-V pacemakers and ICD, EP studies, lead extractions, a-fib ablations, cyro-ablations, laser technologies, and tilt table testing. There are 23 cardiologists and 4 electrophysiologists. 17 are interventional cardiologists. The practice is very very busy! We also serve the greater eastern Iowa and northestern part of Illiniois cath labs that do not perform interventions. Usually these are diagnostic caths and if it is a difficult intervention, they patients are flown up to our facility. Our facility is a level II trauma center. We perform about 30-40 procedures a day. In addition, 4-5 EP procedures. Our cath lab has over 40 staff with a mix of RTR and RN's. We have a seond shift (3p-11:30p) and a call team who comes in at 3pm and works until the cases are done. If the call team works past 2am, they do not have to return to work the next day. We also have one EP staff member on call every night until 7am. We have 5 dedicated EP staff. Each takes one call night a week and then rotate the weekends every 5th weekend. The two other staff members for the EP team comes from the cath lab call team. In the cath lab, 4 people are on a call team. Everyone has one call night a week and rotates every 6th weekend. Unless you have senority and there are enough staff members to cover the weeknights, you only have to take call every 6th weekend. Our hospital policy is that no one should work 16 hours striaght so we make sure our call teams are well rested. They are not required to come in until 3pm and if they work past 2am, they are not required to come in the next day. As for time off, we can have two full weeks of vaction every year that is gaurenteed! We are only allowed to have 3 people off at one time. Even if we do not have PTO stored up we are still granted two weeks. Our staff is very good about helping each other out when we have personal issues or need to get to a family functions. We have 5 paid holidays, and three sick days a year. We are not a teaching hospital, so we work very closely with our docs. We have an awesome physician/nurse relationship! Although, we have these things, we are still tired and want to hire more people, but as you say it's all policitcal!

I find everyone's answers very interesting. Nubain actually works on different opioid receptors. It works on the kappa and mu receptors and should actually provide a more powerful pain relief than others. It is actullay very effective for pain relief during post sheath removal. Is this medication ever mixed with Phenergan? If not, I highly recommend this because it provides a sedative effect as well. This combination is often given to labor patients right before the transition phase. The effects usually wear off in a couple hours. I am sure in older patients the dosage should be cut in half, and for chronic pain patients, a higher dose is often needed.

I work in the Cardiac cath lab but often float to the floor when we are not busy. I honestly can not imagine that many patients at one time. I think 5 has been the max for me. I really feel 3-4 patients is appropriate and safe. I agree that medications "drive by's" are not safe and ineffective. WE are still fighting to keep 3-4 the ratio but having a lot of difficulty. I would really like to see some guidelines and criteria like ICU has to keep our ratios low. I understand that ICU critera are mostly if they have a cardiac arrest or are on a vent. It would be nice to have some critera for our patients! If anyone has info on this let me know! Our patients are CHF, post CABG and vavles, pre and post EP and cath, several drips too everything but Levo. One night I had 5 patients and one of them was post CABG and had a muscle flap, had two chest tubes to suction, three J/P's, tracheostomy, VRE, MRSA and PEG tube with constant feeding. Oh and a PICC line. That's crazy!

We have 8 cardiac cath labs and we are very very busy! We have 15 interventional cardiologists plus 3 electrophysiologist. We are a level II trama center located in the nations heartland. It is not a teaching hospital so we do not have fellows. We have approximatley 40 staff memebers. We usually run 3 to a room with at least one RN for sedation. We have a mix of RTR's and RN's. Our positions for a 3 person room are RN (sedation and patient care only!), scrub person, and recorder, circulate and RTR. OUr state requires there is an available RTR in the room at all times so we have to have at least one RTR that is not scrubbed in. Most of the time we run 4 to a room with an RN, recorder, and scrub, and RTR. Usually this is for the hairy procedures, when things are complicated and can go south quickly. We have one physician who is VERY talented and all he does is interventions only. He does not see patients or have an office. He strictly does procedures 24/7. Our lab usually works well into the early morning hours to accommidate the need :nuke:. He always is allowed 4 people to a room because his procedures are more complicated than the other physicians. Our relationship with our physicians is amazing! They are supportive and very flexible. We do our best to serve both our patients and the very busy cardiology practice. We only allow 3 staff memebers off at one time. We all have to live within 30 minutes of the hospital to be on call.

I work in the Cardiac Cath lab, it took me 6 long months to even get considered a position here. I have been a nurse for 5 1/2 years and worked 2 of those years on a Cardiovascular stepdown unit. You really need experience to work in the cath lab. Training is brief, 6 weeks because you are already expected to have basic knowledge of EKG's ACLS and BCLS. I find I have to anticipate what will happen the patient in reference to what the doctor is doing. You have to analyze data very very quickly. Even if we have a doctor present most of the time, they are not focused on the "whole picture" the main goal for the doctor is to open the artery. You are responsible for a lot of things. Things can gete hairy quickly! Knowing what to anticipate next is important. You really have to study study study too. I would highly recommend starting on a cardiac floor. If you do want the position and end up getting it, consider extending your training.