Short rant about techs and delegation (I am venting)

215 Posts

Specializes in Telemetry.

So we are running short on staff. No suprize as it is the holidays, but here is something I find frustrating. Our floor houses the monitor area for all telemetry throughout the hospital and sometimes the nurses have to get pulled to be monitor techs when we are short techs. Such an instance occured tonight. There are two sides to the monitor station: Critical care and Telemetry. The nurse that was up to be pulled is, unfortunately, a very poor telemetry nurse and not very strong. She has also been a nurse for less than a year. But you know there is always your first time to do it and it really is the only way to learn. However, the tech we were missing was on the critical care side. I suggested that the tech scheduled for telemetry go to the critical care side due to the fact that she has many years more experience than the new nurse and the new nurse do regular telemetry. The night tech actually got in to a ******* match with me about this due to the fact that the tech coming on for Day shift had already had the telemetry side the day before and it "wouldn't be fair" if she had to switch. because she already knew all the patients on the telemetry side. I say that nurses and floor techs have to switch care of their patients often enough even though we prefer to keep our same teams if we are working shifts in a row. The monitor tech goes, "Well we aren't nurses!" I can honestly say I wanted to punch her at this point. It is not about what is "fair" it is about what is best for the PATIENTS!!!!! However I could not seem to get this concept accross to the monitor tech and the charge nurse, out of fear of getting in trouble with the monitor techs supervisor, caved and put the new nurse on the critical care side. (The charge did try to find another stronger nurse to take the duty first, but there were no takers, especially since we only had 2 of our own nurses on the floor anyway and the rest were travelers or pulled nurses themselves.) I just think it is sad that my charge did not feel supported enough by our management to make a decision that would improve patient safety out of fear of the monitor tech's manager who has no nursing background what so ever! GRRRRRRR.:angryfire

K, end vent! Thanks!:redbeathe