questions to telemetry nurses

I have only worked Tele at the hospitals. I went from corrections to Tele to Hospice. Personally I think that Tele is the way to go for experience. You will get some classes to read the monitors and some extra help with cardiac drips. I loved working Tele and certainly learned a lot. I never once felt my license was at risk. My only concern would be this...Why did FOUR nurses just leave?

Our telemetry floor is no different than any other medical floor...basically, that's just where the screens are. Patients throughout the hospital are on tele, they aren't all in that unit. You have to have training to sit and read the monitors, but techs also do it, not just RN's. As far as codes, we have no MORE codes on that floor than anywhere else.

I agree with ShayRN. There is a reason why the unit lost four nurses.

You shouldn't be afraid of tele, it's not as if patients are coding right and left. They should be fairly stable, otherwise they'd be in the ICU. Since they're on a monitor, you have an extra set of eyes on the patient at all times.

I love tele!

At my hospital, we only send patients who are stable with negative troponins and no active chest pain (of a cardiac nature) to the tele floor. The sick patients, or those on vasoactive drips either go to the PCU or ICU.

The hospital should have some type of course for tele certification which should be a part of your orientation.

Try it - you just might like it.

Blee

Patients can and do code at any time on any floor. I'm tempted to think our floor has fewer codes, due to the fact that they are on telemetry and are being treated for arrhythmias before they develop into lethal ones.

As the others have mentioned, I'd be wondering why four nurses have left?

I've only worked on a tele unit and I've learned so much! We take everything from surgical pts to your simple chest painers. We take a ton of gtts so you can learn a lot about those too. I feel very confident in my abilities as a nurse from the experience learned on a cardiac unit and I can say that in my 4 years of working there, have only coded a handful of pts on my shift.

Now as for 4 nurses just leaving. On my unit we have a high turnover rate. Now this is due to certain factors but it also is due to the fact that many nurses start out in tele to gain their experience and then go to other units that they are interestd in such as OB, ER, ICU which is where many of the nurses have gone recently. We even have a nurse that wants to be in peds but there were no jobs when she applied.

You will take some telemetry classes before starting and you'll probably get a good orientation before being on your own. Good luck.

BE CAREFUL!!! First thing, what happened that they lost 4 nurses? Like most tele units they probably have huge turnover. I worked ICU/tele for a long time and I will tell you from my experience, half of your patients in tele should probably already be in ICU, the nurse/patient ratios are the worst (and DON'T believe them when they tell you it's 1:4 or 5!!),the work load and stress level are incredibly high, truly, I was less stressed in ICU than I was in tele. That's just my perception, maybe others have had a more positive experience. Good luck in your search.

I started in tele and have worked on med/surg floors. to be honest..i prefer them on a monitor because then i have extra eyes on them. and also... i think in five years...every pt will be tele/remote tele. its great exp so go for it. ask for help, you have your basic stuff down. they will show you / teach you the rest.

as the others said.. investigate why four nurses left. check out your rn to pt ratios as well.

good luck in whatever you decide :heartbeat

BE CAREFUL!!! First thing, what happened that they lost 4 nurses? Like most tele units they probably have huge turnover. I worked ICU/tele for a long time and I will tell you from my experience, half of your patients in tele should probably already be in ICU, the nurse/patient ratios are the worst (and DON'T believe them when they tell you it's 1:4 or 5!!),the work load and stress level are incredibly high, truly, I was less stressed in ICU than I was in tele. That's just my perception, maybe others have had a more positive experience. Good luck in your search.

I do agree that a lot of our pts should be in ICU. I feel like we are the ICU half the time. It is a very stressful environment. I'm lucky enough (if I can say that) to really have a pt ratio of 1:4 on nights and sometimes 1:3. Dayshift is 1:3. Even with ratios like that, you can be running your butt off all night long. YOu can't beat the experience though. LIke I said, I feel pretty confident in most of my skills.

I'm graduating in December, and I've just accepted a job on a tele floor. If a new grad can do it, you can too!

For the record, I was told they train you on EKG, and the training is better than what you got in nursing school, which (for me) was one day.