Transporting patients to radiology

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Specializes in ER.

I work in a small ER. I am wondering who transports the patients in your hospitals to the radiology depatment in your hospital? Do they take your patient off the monitor? Do they put them back on the monitor when they return the to the room? What about the IV? Do they insist that the IV be locked before transport? What size hospital do you work for? My ER has 8 rooms. 6000 visits yearly. Getting increasingly more busy and radiology wants us to take our patients off the monitor have our patiens in a wheelchair and IV locked and then transport our patients to the department. They will then bring the patient back when the study is done. As the RN I have tried to explain to adminsitration that I am in charge of 6 - 8 patients at a time doing all the IV placements, blood draws, EKG's, breathing treatments, and drug adminstration (no pyxis) in addition to all the addmissions of said patients and transporting to the floor of these patients, I also start all the IV's that go bad on the floor and insert foley's for any outpatient radiology US. Oh I also triage my ER patients, and their are only 2 of us on 7-3, 3 on 3-11, 2 on 11-7. No secretary No tech, only RN's and only one MD ever. usually have wait times running average 1-4 hours.:cry:

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Ask the Nurse before transporting a patient. :nuke:

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Specializes in M/S, Tele, Peds, ER.

That cracks me up, so basically your radiology department doesn't want you to transport actual SICK patients to them. Just the healthy ones that don't need monitors, drips, and can sit up in a wheelchair.

Riiiiiight......

Um, well, I'll tell you what we do at my ER, Level II Trauma, 52 beds

-Basically you start with ER techs to transport your non-monitored type patient, if they're busy you can get an EMT as well. These are your primary transporters

-If the pt needs to be on a monitor, pt STAYS ON MONITOR, and is transported by a paramedic.

-Of course if time and the ER gods allow, you can transport the patient yourself, I've done that a few times when its possible. Sometimes theres a nurse floating around helping pple that can. But really, the RN is the only one with patients assigned to him/her that they're responsible for watching and caring for. The RN isn't expected to leave their 4-5 other patients. Thats just not safe.

But thats the jist of it

ER tech/EMT for non-monitored pt

Paramedic/RN for monitored pt

Whoever takes them there brings them back as well.

I disconnect IVF on a lot of pts that just have KVO type IVF running, just to keep things easy. If they don't technically need to be on a monitor (the ones I just throw on the monitor to keep a closer eye for whatever reason) its a judgment call and you can take them off for the procedure.

Your ER sounds like a nightmare to work in! No resources! No team of help around you! YOU're running the ER!

You're making me count my blessings here....

Good luck!

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Specializes in Neuroscience/Neuro-surgery/Med-Surgical/.

All monitored patients MUST have RN to assist with transport to any tests; whether they are from the ER, Step Down Units or ICUs its the hospital policy. Our hospital is one of the largest in Chicago with over 800 inpatient beds.

While I am working in Step Down unit, I usually will disconnect the IV solutions unless its something like heparin (we don't have cardiac drips), connect to the portable monitor, and off we go to CT, MRI, echo,doppler studies, etc.....

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Specializes in ER, Trauma, ICU/CCU/NICU, EMS, Transport.

Wow - I think you'll find there is/are an infinite number of ways this is being done. I'll tell you this, if routinely your ER staff (RN's or Techs) are the ones exclusively doing the transport then your dept better have adequate staffing FTE's for this. "IF" your radiology dept will do most of the "stable" pt's (IE: RN unaccompanied) you can bet radiology will have some manpower staffed in their dept (maybe like a rad tech assistant)...You might even have in house "transporters" taking stable pt's. It all depends.

Here's what I've seen in my 18 years at 9 different ER's

1) ER RN/tech does all transports; stable pt's are "parked" in the radiology hallway; rad tech or rad assistant brings them back

2) Rad does all transport except if RN needs to go w/unstable pt.

3) In house transporters until 11pm, after that, if the rad techs are nice, they'll do it, if not RN's have to...

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