What are your limits for tele techs?

pricklypear · Jun 11, 2005

My hospital doesn't have any standards, that I know of. Our monitor tech monitors not only ICU, but housewide tele. IMHO, this can get to be way too much for 1 person. We have 24 ICU beds, 24 tele beds, and 3 whole units which can transmit housewide tele. At my old hospital, our tele units (27 and 30 beds) had their own monitor techs on each unit - and the 30 bed unit had 2 techs during the day. All the ICUs had their own monitor techs, and housewide tele was monitored in rhythm central. They had 2 techs at all times.

Keely-FutureRN · Jun 11, 2005

I worked as a tele tech on the step down cardiac unit. We always had two techs watching about 40 pts. each. I think it is a good idea to always have two people because they can help eachother, get a second opinion on measurements and rhythm strips, etc. Our tele station was always at the nurses station so that we could get help if we needed to (codes, runs of v-tach, v-fib, etc.) Some nights we had less and others we had more patients (up to the ninety'sl) but it was always a priority to have two techs because the alarms went off often and sometimes we were just constantly charting. Plus we charted q4 on everyone in addition to the abnormalities.

Keely

AMV · Jun 11, 2005

What did you do in the event that one called in sick and a replacement couldn't be found? Did you use a nurse from the unit or did they just use one tech?

I worked as a tele tech on the step down cardiac unit. We always had two techs watching about 40 pts. each. I think it is a good idea to always have two people because they can help eachother, get a second opinion on measurements and rhythm strips, etc. Our tele station was always at the nurses station so that we could get help if we needed to (codes, runs of v-tach, v-fib, etc.) Some nights we had less and others we had more patients (up to the ninety'sl) but it was always a priority to have two techs because the alarms went off often and sometimes we were just constantly charting. Plus we charted q4 on everyone in addition to the abnormalities.
Keely

Keely-FutureRN · Jun 12, 2005

What did you do in the event that one called in sick and a replacement couldn't be found? Did you use a nurse from the unit or did they just use one tech?

Well, practically all the cna's were trained as tele techs so we could always pull one of them off the floor to go to tele. We rarely couldn't find a replacement in which case one tech would cover everything (which was really hard work...) We had 5 cna's (7-11) and two techs and usually 3-4 of us were certified on tele. The other's still on the floor would have to pick up the patients while the tech watched tele. The nurse's are paid differently and it's not allowed for nurses to sub-in for techs and vice versa.

Keely

JAHJF · Jun 25, 2005

I have a question for those of you out there who work on a Tele, PCU or IMCU unit that uses remote telemetry monitoring. I am trying to find out what your facility standards are for the telemetry tech as far as what is the max. # of patients that they can monitor before a second tech must be added? Are there any "standards" out there that your facility goes by?

At my hospital the ICUs watch their own tele. And the telemetry room for the rest of the hospital is on the step-down unit where I work. They monitor our unit (usually all 30+pt on tele) and the 3 other units of the hospital that can have tele pts. Most of the time we have 1 tele tech but when the hospital has 40+ tele pts they are supposed to have 2 techs. And we have at times had to use RNs to help monitor depending on census and scheduling.