i am considering a job in telemetry unit but i keep thinking about whether or not i should do it and i cant come up with an answer. i was lpn for few years, went back to school, graduated from rn program last year. since i graduated from school last year i continued to work in nursing homes because i'm very comfortable working in nursing homes. yesterday my co-worker who works in the hospital told me that she works in telemetry unit and they lost 4 nurses there and they are looking for nurses and asked me if i'm interested. my immediate answer was "yes" because i've been looking for an open positions in the hospital. but what bothers me is that this is a telemetry unit. i have no hospital work experience, and i dont have that much confidence in myself because of my no experience working in the hospital. but the thought of working in telemetry unit where patietns have heart problems and they are on cardiac monitors and they can code at any moment really scares me. so my question is:
how is telemetry unit different from med/surge unit? are patients more sicker than regular med/surg unit? do you think its better to work in med/surg first then change to telemetry? do you think its good idea for a nurse who has no experience to work in telemetry unit and putting my license at risk? thanks for any advice. :bow:
I'm a CNA on our Tele floor and I absoutley LOVE IT!! It's so interesting and you learn so much!! Tele or ICU is where I want to go when I become a nurse!
if you are happy why do you want to move? life is no better in the hospital but your stress levels may be worse. make sure you are moving for the right reasons. good luck
to be honest, i'm not very happy with working in nursing home right now. i do same thing everyday and i feel so incompetent at times, like not being able to start an iv. i keep having this thohghts thats bothering me that i didnt work in the hospital after i graduated.
i read a job description of a unit i've applied for a job. this is a cardiac stepdown unit. according to a description, half of the patients are from icu or er, it is a fast faced unit, and they prefer nurses with 1 to 2 years of experience. so now i'm leaning toward maybe this unit is not the right for me. it might be better if i worked in medical telemetry, where i'm exposed to medical and telemetry patients.
I work tele as a new grad and it was a good stepping stone to move to a lot of other places. We also have had at least 2 subacute nurses come to our floor and they adjusted just fine. You will get a lot of the same patients on tele you get on the medical floors. Pneumonia with heart history, fracture hip with chronic atrial fib, medical overflow, then your straight forward heart patients such as new onset atrial fib, Stemi after being in ICU, open heart surgery, congestive heart failure. I think patient codes are less on tele because we often see rhythm changes early you can't see on med/surg, though yes our patient might be more prone to these change. Codes don't really happen anymore often then most other units.
I've noticed that most posts indicate that a tele unit has more "eyes" on the patients, which technically is true, however, when I started in this business we had an R.N. dedicated to watching the monitors, then we had a trained tech, who also was dedicated to doing nothing else but watching all the monitors. Let me tell ya, the last unit I was at didn't have ANYONE dedicated to watching monitors, I was told "we all keep a watch", scaaarrry!!! In fact we came in for our shift and noted one screen that had been silenced, and there was nothing but pacer spikes. We started the code hoopla but it was already too late, patient had expired. anyway, if you folks have good units with lots of support and a cohesive crew, God bless ya. Just food for thought for our freind in need here, sorry I don't have much positive to offer, but everyone here is right, the experience you'll get is fantastic, but again, make sure of your patient/nurse ratio, etc, get it in writing if you can.
I've been working telemery for 10 years and I absolutely love it! I've seen a lot of nurses come in, get a year or two experience and move on to bigger and better things. 4 nurses leaving wouldn't concern me too much. Many use tele as a stepping stone. All our nurses are trained to read the tele strips and in ACLS drugs. We don't have a monitor tech, so an RN watches the monitors. I believe we probably have fewer codes on our unit then the other units because we are able to better identify problems before they arise. There is so much experience to be had on a med/surg/tele floor, I would highly recommend it for anyone new just for experience alone.
:bow:
vashtee, RN
1,065 Posts
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.