Vital sign Documentation In ER

[jollymon16]

Our ER prints off the vital sign trends from the monitor and puts a patient label on it and uses this for vs documentation. this is the first place I have been that does this, typically vital signs must be hand written, mostly to prove the nurse actually looked at them. How is it done in your ER? I would like to move to hand written vitals.

[Anna Flaxis, BSN, RN]

If I'm doing q5 vitals, there's typically a reason and I don't have time to chart everything manually, unless we have a scribe present, which isn't always the case. That's when I will print out the monitor report and send it with the rest of the paperwork to the ICU. For routine vitals on a stable patient, I hand write them, and I have time to double check wonky readings manually.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

So if I took a patients pulse on one wrist and had the oximetry probe on a finger on the same hand but the readings are different I would go with the manual reading. Same goes for BPs and a machine can't do resp rates which is important so I believe it's a step backwards to consistently rely on machinery when we're capable of doing it ourselves

My post addressed "manually recording" (e.g., writing) vitals vs. importing them from the monitor -- not manual BP vs. Dynamap/auto cuff.

[BrooklynRN11201]

our monitors do RR as well.

[hiddencatRN, BSN, RN]

Ours do.

So do ours and we have ancient monitors.

I don't think forcing another task is the way to ensure nurses are looking at vital signs. That's more of a culture issue because I cannot imagine NOT reviewing vital signs.