telemetry

[JManinga]

How many telemetry techs do you have providing oversight for how many telemetry units/patients. Thank you.

[Anagray, BSN]

we always have only one tech on monitors for bedside and box monitoring. There are always at least 25 patients to monitor. Usually it is the whole unit, probably upto 35 patients at the same time.

[jmcclellanprofrn]

I've worked telemetry in two different facilities. One had no tech, the RN was supposed to hopefully catch rhythm changes. The 2nd had 19 beds and 1 monitor tech of evenings and nights, otherwise the charge nurse watched the monitors.

[SharonH, RN]

One monitor tech, 41 beds although they might not all be monitored at any given time.

[indeed]

We don't have monitor techs, the RNs are responsible for the monitors. Our unit coordinators used to be monitor techs on the old unit (the unit I work on is a little over a year old) so if there are major alarms they give everyone a heads up. This might change though...we recently had a patient who was on cardizem...the grounding lead popped off and no one noticed this until half an hour later...worst case scenario, a really BAD scene.

Indeed.

[RNforLongTime]

We used to have monitor techs until this past April. They decided to move the 24 tele monitors (pts can be monitored on three different units, they aren't all on one floor) to ICU so us ICU RN's can watch them!

[REDWOMANRN]

I QUIT A TELEMETRY UNIT ABOUT 2 MONTHS AGO!!!

WE HAD 36 UNITS AND 1 TELEMETRY TECH!!!!!!

BUT...HAVE THE TIME THE DOC'S DIDN'T LISTEN TO THEM ANYWAY!!

IMAGINE

[live4today, RN]

When I worked telemetry, at one hospital we had a tele tech that sat at the nurses station watching the monitors and would alert us to changes. At another hospital, the ICU nurses monitored the telemetry patients from their unit. And, another hospital had the nurses doing their own monitoring. I preferred the latter. :)