Working a specialty with or with out proper traning!

[definit1on]

Hello All,

Recently our hospital went to incorporating telemetry onto all floors of the hospital to encourage patient centered care (i.e oncology, psychology, step down, ect), with more floors receiving more beds then others. Currently I work on the oncology/ medical surgical floor. We were giving three four hour classes with one two hour session in the monitoring room, and one eight hour share day on the dedicated tele floor. After this training we hit the floor running. I was just interested in the general opinion of those nurses with experience as well as those who have worked tele in the past. Any thoughts?

[HeySis, BSN, RN]

I want to make are I understand.... so

Are more oncology patients now being placed on telemetry?

Or the ones that had telemetry are now being monitored by their home unit instead of by a telemetry aide in another unit that calls down and notifies if they see something??

(and same for all the other units??)

Any patient in our facility that is on telemetry has their reading show up on a monitor in each floors nursing station and on a monitor that is in the ICU and manned 24/7 by a person that spends their entire shift watching, documenting and calling the floor nurses if they see something irregular.

[MunoRN, RN]

The use of telemetry seems to be going in two different directions, some hospitals are using tele everywhere, others are cracking down on excessive use of telemetry even on tele floors. If putting the patient on tele isn't serving a clear purpose, then all you're really doing is causing them to be woken up every 30 minutes to fix their leads, which probably does more harm than whatever benefit there is in continuously monitoring a psych patient, for instance. How does your administration feel tele monitoring contributes to "patient centered care"?

[definit1on]

Our floor has a mix of patients. Our oncology patients are usually there for symptom management, to receive a port, and or chemo. We have a mix of patients in that we also receive medical surgical patients and now tele patients. They are continuously monitored and we have a monitor station on our unit. We are notified by the monitor room with any changes.

My question really is how much training should some one recieve to take care of these patients. Know one on my floor has worked tele witch has caused allot of stress in the unit.

[definit1on]

How does your administration feel tele monitoring contributes to "patient centered care"?

The thinking is that if a patient needs to be "upgraded" to be placed on a monitor they do not have to leave the floor. If they are downgraded they stay on the same floor they were admitted to. Another part of the change is allowing to keep the hospitalists or residents patients grouped together from emergency room to inpatient. Its just interesting that since the implementation of tele there is no one on the floor who has tele experience.