Staffing of ECMO patients

[jrsquire1]

I'm curious what your unit's staffing policy regarding patients on ECMO is; do you automatically single or staff it in a 1 (nurse):2 (patients) assignment based on acuity?

[Lovelymo79]

Our ECMO patients are always 1:1. From the time they come in to the time they leave. We've even had some be so sick we staffed them 2:1 ( 2 nurses for 1 patient). Even if they are "stable", they are 1:1.

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

In PICU, they are always 1:1. Our pump/ perfusionist is either an RT or an RN.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

ECMO...1:1 with a perfusionist or 2:1 without a perfusionist.

[PMFB-RN, RN]

We staff them 2 RNs :1 ECMO patient, no prefusionist.

[LiFeisPeAcHy]

Our ECMO patients are always 1:1 or 2:1 is they are really unstable. There is always an in house perfusionist.

[thatoneguyRN]

1:1 RN with a perfusionist, though the perfusionist may watch multiple ecmo patients.

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

Always 1:1 along with a ECMO tech (who is a specially trained RN or RT).

A few months ago we ran into some serious staffing issues when our 24 bed unit had 6 ecmo patients and an additional 2 CRRT patients (in my hospital CRRT is 1:1 with an additional pump nurse). That was 8 patients total who needed 2:1 care along with the rest who were pretty high acuity, we don't usually staff for that many nurses, it was rough going for a bit.

(this is peds btw)

[StayLost, BSN, RN]

At my current unit our ECMO patients are always 1:1 in my current job. If paged, profusion shows up in minutes. It was a big change from my last unit where we were often 2:1 with profusion at the bedside 24 hours.