Rapid Response

[TulsaTime]

I work on a dedicated rapid response team. As we have grown we continue to try to find other facilities with a dedicated team to benchmark against for activities or ideas to increase the value of our RRT. We do not have patients and we work closely with the house supervisors. We currently round throughout the hospital and attempt to identify high risk patients, answer questions, assist with mock codes and education, assist with stroke alerts, In house STEMI alerts, follow up on patients transferred out of the ICU, and follow up on falls.

I was hoping there might be others out there on a similar team to compare and also was wondering if any of you would be interested in sharing statistics (how many patients remain on the floor or are transferred to another level of care, what is the final disposition i.e. home, nursing home)? We have a new director and she wants to know how we compare to other programs but it's very difficult to find information to compare to.

[CVICURN22]

At my hospital, we do not have a dedicated RRT. The RRT comprises of ICU Charge, a member of therespiratoty care, pharmacist, MD, House Sup, and transporter. I didn't even realize some hospitals like yours have dedicated RRTs. But to answer some of your questions, every RR is different and the plan of care will be decided based on the patient presentation. So it would be hard to find hard data to best answer the question of statistics. (So I think).

[traumasurgRN]

This sounds very similar to the Rapid Response team at my hospital. Our team does many of the same duties, we also round on patients who have a PCA to make sure settings are correct and the documentation is correct. Our team is based out of our trauma surgical icu, but several of our team members have experience in other areas such as MICU and ER. I am not sure of any specific stats, but I have been told that the umber of unexpected unit transfers have been drastically cut down since the initiation of a dedicated RRT.

[Charmedone923]

im a little jealous you have a dedicated RRT. we dont have one. Its always the MCCU Rns who run to the rapid response calls and the RT. if youre lucky, the supervisor shows up and stays. We dont want to go because then our patients are left unattended. And lately, another deterrent to wanting to go those rapid response calls.we now have to do a complete assessment and a sepsis screening on top of the RRT sheet that needs to be filled out:(

[rockstar11]

I work in a large teaching hospital - so we thankfully we have a rapid response team. We do have many critical care RN rounders, and there job is dedicated to rounding on acute patients, responding to chest pain, responding to acute changes, and are a quick resource in potential emergencies. In addition, we also have a Rapid Response Team-which has a provider or physician, a critical care nurse, respiratory, and a pharmacist to rapidly assess a pt. We also have a code team.

I am not aware of what our statistics are... but as a new-ish RN.... these teams are invaluable to me. I've called many critical care nurses and rapid responses that may have prevented my patients from coding later.