jethrobodine

As a traveler I have worked with several electronic MARs, scanning systems etc., and I must say that Intellidot is the most cumbersome, time consuming eMAR I have worked with. It was also the system most prone to causing medication errors. If you click on the wrong dot or accidentally click the CARET at the wrong time it is a pain to correct it. I counted the steps from the time of scanning the patient's band to the time of actually giving the patient the medication and stopped counting at 18! Intellidot seems to be intentionally designed to remove nurses from the bedside and actual patient care and make the job more difficult and stressful.

I would have to add kudos to bassplayers post. I have worked as a traveler/agency nurse for 16 years and have been all over the country, once licensed in 26 separate states. In that capacity you have to hit the ground running and my area of expertise has always been ICU/ER so you can't have one thumb in your nose and be a lone wolf when somebody crashes. If it weren't for RT's my ass would have been in the fire more than once with nobody to pull it out had it not been for them. It is a major comfort to know that somebody with specific knowledge has your back and you are freed up to take care of other issues. Nurses do what nobody else can because they are licensed to do it. A therapist cannot hang vasoactive drips or give IV push paralytics or a thousand other things that nurses do. On the other hand, as a nurse I have given lots of nebs, drawn abg's (from a-lines and sticks), done cpt, retaped ett tubes, assisted more intubations than I can count, taken orders for vent changes. The RT in most places I have worked is obliged to give the nurse the responsibility to call gases to the doctor and take RT orders because they can't legally take telephone or verbal orders. Still, I would not place the nurse in the position of being above the RT, and a regular floor nurse is in a much different position than an ER nurse or an ICU nurse both in scope of practise and in experience and training. There is not an ICU in the land that would take a nurse that is not ACLS at least and the RT is not always available for every eventuality in the unit. If three patients are crashing in three different ICU departments at a large institution that only has a couple of RT's on staff at night then guess who has to pick up the slack. Yep, it's the nurse. So though I honor and respect RT's I know that ultimately the responsibility for the patient will fall on the nurse and so will the blame if things crap out. Regretably on those few occasions when praise is given for the well being of a patient the fair share of credit is not often given to the RT who has done so much.

i absolutely agree with you dude. used to be that people came down to work during season as travelers, nowadays though they don't come back after one tour. so to msmorningglory and zubster or any others that fail to heed the cry come on down. you have been duly warned so don't whine when it turns out to be just as those of us here have reported it to be...

i have been working agency at boca raton community hospital for the last year and cannot advise anyone strongly enough to avoid it. you will be floated to any and all units, including e.r. and will be canned immediately if you balk. the bad part is that it is not an isolated case. there is not really any hospital in broward or palm beach that has any interest in patient care or nurse welfare. avoid this area like the plague.

hey guys, could we have about thirty more posts about that foley catheter stopping the nosebleed?

the system is known as the VAMP http://www.edwards.com/products/pressuremonitoring/vampsystem.htm http://www.lhsc.on.ca/critcare/icu/procedures/vamp.pdf

somebody is feeding you a line of bull. this is a common tact used by people trying to convince you that the action they want to follow is somehow validated or mandatory according to some faux "authority". stick to your guns and unless your institution has some actual mandated rule regarding this type of practise follow your own common sense.