Baptist Golden Triangle Adds Extra Eyes To Their ICU

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – In a hospital, ICU patients are in need of the most care and the most monitoring, and Baptist Golden Triangle is making sure its patients always have watchful eyes, even when the on-duty nurse steps out of the room.

The on-duty nurse may step out of the room, but before that happens a button is pushed to call in an electronic ICU nurse, giving these patients their own tele-guardian.

At Baptist Golden Triangle, the 18 bed intensive care unit has one nurse for every two beds.

Of course, that nurse can’t be in two places at once, but the latest addition to the ICU, in a way, can make that happen with the TeleGuardian monitoring system.

“We also call it eICU, so it’s kind of like TeleHealth in a sense. We have live eICU nurses that are located in Memphis that can help collaborate with us with our patients,” said Director of Critical and Progressive Care, Brandy Waldrop.

When the unit gets busy, these extra set of eyes can come in handy.

“If we have a patient that… there’s a lot going on or we need to step into our other patient’s room, we can call our eICU nurse, ask them to watch patient,” continued Waldrop.

“It’s pretty cool,” said nurse, Lauren Beasley. They’re constantly evaluating the patient.”

They’re not constantly watching, though.

They only come when they’re needed, and that’s only a push of a button away.

“You just hit the button, the EICU comes across the screen with a ding-dong, like a doorbell,” said Waldrop.

“You know, today I got very busy. I was unable to call for a consult. I called the eICU, and they called that doctor for me,” said Beasley.

For a job that can be hectic and fast-paced, having that extra supervision is giving Baptist Golden Triangle nurses less stress and more focus in making their patients care number one.

“They’ve got someone who kind of has their back and can notify them if something’s gone wrong,” said Waldrop.

“You just wave, say hey, and they’re welcome. They’ll do anything,” said Beasley.

Baptist Golden Triangle is the first of Baptist’s 21 locations outside of the Memphis area to implement this monitoring system, but that doesn’t mean they’re the last.

Other locations in our area will be putting in the systems in the coming weeks