A Basic Vital Signs Monitoring System Is Essential But Not Enough: Here’s Why
As a nurse or general healthcare practitioner, your day at the health center or hospital can be very tedious. Nurses especially have to constantly monitor patients and be ready to page doctors who are almost always on call.
Though it’s one of the most critical areas in the health facility for a patient to be in, the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with all its technology offers nurses a bit of relief. Yes, they have to keep more eyes on the patient but the one thing that helps them to determine whether the patient remains stable or is getting worse is the vital sign monitoring device.
The beeping of this innovative device and its screen signals tell a lot, from the patient’s blood pressure rate to their heart rate. What would healthcare practitioners do without such technology? For one thing, it would be harder to know whether or not a patient is on the verge of cardiac arrest.
Despite its amazing benefits, there are reasons why a basic vital sign monitoring system may not be enough for your facility, or any facility for that matter. Here are two:
- Only in the ICU — Sadly, in some facilities, vital signs monitoring devices are only used in the ICU. As a result, a patient might die suddenly while in the recovery unit, leaving you, the healthcare worker, wishing you were able to see the internal signs earlier to prevent it.
- Not available during transitions — Let’s say there are basic monitoring systems available in each ward, they still wouldn’t be enough to do the job of keeping the patient alive. Know why? Because there are no systems available to monitor the vital signs of a patient while they transition from, say, the ICU to the recovery unit.
A lot can happen during the space of time when a patient is unhooked for the monitoring system in the ICU and transferred and hooked up to the devices in a less critical ward. For one thing, patient deterioration can occur in the interim between a physical vital sign spot check. There can be a spike or drop in blood pressure, heart rate, or temperature, which can prove fatal if undetected in time.
So, what can be done to reduce these preventable deaths? The answer lies in continuous vital sign monitoring. With such a system, there will be lesser undetected physiological changes so the patient can be better-taken care of in the nick of time.
This means that the physiological deterioration that takes place before cardiac arrest in 84% of patients can be prevented. The best part is this: instead of having to physically monitor your patients and be bothered by manual charting, you’ll now be able to relax and take time to focus on treatment plans for them! With a continuous vital sign monitoring system it’s a win-win situation for all, trust me!
