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Kelvin Matute, RN, director of critical care at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, says top-notch devices are great, but says sometimes it’s simple solutions that nurses need — easier-to-read fonts and screens, for example. Here, he discusses a device with Edna Trajano, RN, of the cardiothoracic surgical unit.

Ask nurses working with critical care patients about using the numerous advances in medical equipment and technology and there’s almost all good news: They’re extremely enthusiastic. Not only do they list specific types of equipment that are making their lives easier, they also mention hospital policies making it easier to get both the right equipment and the ancillary support needed for that equipment’s functioning.

One thing every nurse interviewed agreed on is that it’s crucial to have an established policy for bringing new devices into the hospital. It cannot be just that physicians or execs say, “I found this great device. I ordered it. Use it.”

Mary Kay Bader, RN, MSN, CCRN, a neuroscience/critical care CNS at the SICU of Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., calls this process a “culture of collaboration.” She’s worked in critical care for 22 years, eight at Mission. She says when they set up her unit, which handles critical brain injuries, the decision-making involved “the director of trauma, neurosurgeons and other doctors, the nurse manager,” and others to evaluate the guidelines and see which equipment would be necessary.

Along those lines, Kelvin Matute, RN, director of critical care services at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, says, “We have a value analysis team that analyzes proposed purchases of new equipment.” That team is a cross-section from throughout the hospital: “nursing education and team nursing leaders, business/financial officers, pharmacists, doctors,” and others.

All POVs welcome

Brad Prior, RN, BSN, CCRN, has spent five years at Kadlec Medical Center in Richland, Wash. Monitors deliver every number in a patient’s care throughout the CCU, both at the bedside and from the nurses station. How do you take all that vital information with you when transporting the patient?

“Normally, you’d have to unplug all the wires and plug them into a portable monitor,” Prior says. The hospital was getting ready to order new ones when Prior came back from a conference that discussed a newer device he believed offered a significant improvement.

“The entire monitor comes out of a sort of docking port, so you have the original monitor,” he explains. “The patient’s entire history — BP, heart rate, etc. — stays with you.” Not only that, but it costs $4,000 less than what the staff had been considering. Nobody quibbled with Prior when he brought this suggestion to Kadlec.

One advantage of bringing new devices and equipment into critical care is that “CC nurses tend to like technology, so that if you can prove the technology works, they’re willing to use it, ”said Nancy Dahlberg, RN, MSN, unit manager of the CCU at Kadlec and Prior’s supervisor.

Eunice Carlson, RN, BSN, is nurse manager of the cardiothoracic step-down unit and interventional cardiology at the University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, Calif.

Being one step down from critical care, she still has patients highly dependent on technology. That’s why Carlson says it’s essential that new equipment “isn’t just dumped” on her nurses, and adds, “a lot of that depends on the nurse manager’s philosophy.”

Dahlberg is just one nurse who expressed sympathy for the newer nurses “keeping all that information in their heads” on how to use all that equipment. That’s why every expert interviewed noted that training upgrades are constantly being made. Prior says, “The training period’s been increased here because there’s so much to absorb.”