DLovesNursing

Love it!!!!I wish I could do that!!

I work on a Cardiovascular Step-Down Unit; the patient population is mostly First day post op open heart, along with Stent/MI and other telemetry patients. We recently had new monitors installed on the unit. The old monitors had the capability to view the patient's rhythm at bedside and at a central monitor while on the telemetry box. The new system does not allow us to view the patent's rhythm on the bedside monitor while on the telemetry box, only while directly plugged into the bedside monitor. This is very frustrating to us because we are unable to assess and treat patient's rhythms' at the bedside without losing critical seconds to minutes of time to change the type of monitoring they are on. Our company is trying to tell us it is "outdated technology" to have constant telemetry at the bedside along with the central station. I am wondering if this is true or if the company purchased this system and do not want to admit they made a major mistake. Our unit also does not have monitors techs constantly watching the rhythms' at the station, so it critical we are able to assess this immediately.