Telemetry Nurse

When someone has a heart attack or heart surgery, they often aren’t allowed to move from the emergency room to their home. They need to spend time in an intermediate care unit, just to make sure their condition improves before they’re sent home. A Telemetry Nurse provides care in this intermediate setting, monitoring the patient’s condition and giving them their medications.

As a Telemetry Nurse, you work for a hospital and are responsible for four to five patients. When you arrive at work, you talk to the Telemetry Nurse who worked on the previous shift so you’ll have a good idea of which patients need a high level of your attention, and which seem to be improving and preparing to go home.

You then start working with the patients, looking at the heart monitors attached to them and making sure the readings are within the normal range. You write these readings in the patients’ charts for the Doctor to review, and give them medications as directed by their Doctors. The patients will likely ask you about their conditions and when they’ll be allowed to go home. You avoid giving a diagnosis or prognosis, but you reassure them when you can and listen to their concerns.

When new patients come to you for care, you attach them to monitoring machines and help them get comfortable in their beds. You again try to reassure them and help them relax. Patients who are relaxed put less stress on their hearts, and make fewer demands on their Nurses.