ccurn1

Absolutely 1 :1!!! Our new nurse mangager tried to pull that crap with us, it didn't fly! What are they thinking??? Obviously not about the care of the patient or your license.

We use to have a charge nurse out of assignment or with and easy patient.But since new management change we no longer have a charge with light assignments and our base number of 9 nurses was decreased to 8 on day shift. Also we are responsible for taking our own orders off no one else. If we train the secretary to monitor ecg what is the difference if they watch it or if the continue to let the trained tech do it?

I work in an 18bed CCU in a very busy medical center. We have 2-3 patients most days with at least 1 new orientee with us during the day. We are under new management who has made the brilliant money saving decision to take away our telemetry techs. Of course we do not solely depend on the techs to do all the monitoring, but it does come in quite handy whe your are busy in one of your rooms and your other patient decides to misbehave. We currently have at least 6 phones attached outside rooms which the techs immediately call on when a patient has an arrhythmia. A few of us in the unit have been wondering what is the monitoring situation in other hospitals. Most of us find this upcoming change not to be for the better good of our patients. Is this common practice in all CCU's?