telemetry staffing ratios trauma level I hospital?

lee1 · Jul 7, 2004

Telemetry means different things to different people and hospitals. Sounds like you're talking more of a progressive step down unit to me. Our Telemetry unit is primarily non-cardiac medical telemetry. We also have a PCU, which is more cardiac, but not step down. The ratios are 4 or 5:1 days, 6:1 nights with CNAs helping.

Does your hospital do open heart surgery??? That makes the acuity higher.

Thanks for the reply.

lee1 · Jul 7, 2004

Lee, I sent you a PM.

thanks I read it and will reply

gwenith, BSN, RN · Jul 7, 2004

Lee our set - up is so different that any answer I give may be useless but we staff with trendcare with is a computerised patient/dependency system.

OneRN · Jul 7, 2004

I work in a classic stepdown unit. We have only cardiac pts and ICU overflow. Our staffing is 4:1 on days and 5:1 on nights. These days it's difficult to know what to call a unit like ours. We used to be called telemetry, but now every little hospital in the area is calling their floors "telemetry" floors. Technically, we are the intermediate care unit, or at least that's what the sign says in the hallway. We have 40 beds.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jul 7, 2004

Does your hospital do open heart surgery??? That makes the acuity higher.
Thanks for the reply.

Yes, we have post-open heart patients. However, they are not on the unit we call "Telemetry". They are in PCU (Progressive Care Unit) several days post-op and are are 4 to 5:1 on day and 6:1 on nights.

Katnip, RN · Jul 7, 2004

We had two telemetry-style units...step-down and regular telemetry.

Out step-down was divided into two sections...the main being higher level acuity and ratio was 1:3 max. These included all our vents, cardiac and insulin drips.

The second section were the more "stable" patients and ratio was 1:4. They were still of high enough acuity to require closer monitoring. When I left we had been moving drips and vents down there as well. The manager was desperately trying to get admin to change the ratio to the same as the main section, but hospital was saying *no*. A big reason why 7 nurses left in one week.

The other telemetry unit, I never worked in, but they were almost all walkie-talkies...no peritoneal dialysis done, no drips whatsoever, but still on cardiac monitoring mostly for observational purposes for folks with past cardiac histories who needed reletively simple procedures. Ratio was 1:6, but there were more techs on the floor.

RNKPCE · Jul 7, 2004

I work a med/surg tele floor. There is also a unit between us and ICU that is more of a step down. Our ratios are 5pt to 1 nurse on all shifts(California) will go down to 4:1 in 2008. You got to look at the patient population to really compare.

Hi all, wondering what your staffing ratios look like on your telemetry units. Are yours somewhat protected by your State hospital standards????
Do you have units called "cluster"-----4 bed designated with pts between ICU/telemtry???? What is that ratio?????