JEMRN

I have been working on a respiratory floor for 20 years. Suctioning down the trach, changing and/or cleaning the inner cannula is always done as sterile technique. Cleaning around the outside of the trach can be done with clean technique.

On my unit, we have a "rule" for all patients admitted within 15 minutes of the end of a shift. Certainly it is not good customer service or comfortable for the patient to have to wait any longer in the ER for a bed than necessary. If a patient comes to the unit within 15 minutes of the end of the shift, the caregivers on the shift going off are responsible for getting the patient in bed, orienting them to the call bell, giving them the admission hand book, getting a baseline set of vital signs, and letting them know who their nurse will be for the oncoming shift. We also tell them that the nurse will be with them shortly to do an assessment on them and to complete some paperwork. If there is anything they need, they are instructed to use the call light. Any family that accompanies them, no matter what time it is, may stay with them until the nurse completes the admission data base and assessment.

We are starting up a central monitoring room to monitor patients on telemetry. While we used to monitor telemetry on individual units in our hospital using nurses as the monitor technicians, we are now using unlicensed trained staff as monitor techs. Any help in how to develop procedures for this new system would be greatly appreciated. Things we need to know are how is the communication done between the techs and nursing staff; how are the location of the monitors being tracked; what type of training do the monitor technicians receive?