The Importance of a Patient Monitor

by Jet Medical Jet Medical

When you’re in the hospital, proper monitoring can be the difference between life and death depending on what you’re there for. When you’re dealing with certain heart issues or other medical emergencies where your condition can change on a dime, you have to ensure that the medical staff on-site is properly monitoring your condition at all times. To do that, they need to use certain monitors that can provide them real-time information even when they’re not in the room. Spacelabs monitors are one type of monitor that can provide that life-saving information to the nursing staff.

What Is a Patient Monitor?

A patient monitor, like a Spacelabs Ultraview, for example, is a modular device that is hooked up to a patient using electrodes. These electrodes are used to measure things like blood oxygen levels, pulse rates, temperature and ECG rates. These rates are them sent from the modular unit to the central nursing stating where trained medical staff can view and be alerted if any levels dip below normal.

Why Is a Monitor Important?

When a patient is in the hospital for a medical emergency, especially if they’re in the true emergency room, there is so much going on in and around the area that they can often go hours without seeing a doctor or a nurse. Because of that, you can see why these monitors, like Spacelabs monitors, are critically important to their survival in a true emergency situation.

If a patient is sitting for hours without seeing a doctor, or waiting for test results, and they experience an issue, the staff will be alerted when these monitored body functions change. Alerting the nurse or doctor at the central station will cause them to go into the patient room and they’ll be able to perform life saving measures, if necessary, to help the patient. These monitors can truly be the difference between life and death for a patient in a true medical emergency.

Monitors, like Spacelabs monitors, are often portable, meaning that as a patient is transported down a hallway or to a test, with an orderly who is not trained in medical services, they’re still being monitored by the skilled nursing staff that can help them if something goes wrong. These monitors give patients the peace of mind in a scary time that they are going to get the help they need if something goes wrong, and it helps the nursing and medical staff in their ability to juggle multiple emergencies at once.