Mobile Monitoring Equipment for Cardiac Surgery Patients

Miss Bernadette Hannon, Nurse Manager, Keith Shaw Unit

An additional portable cardiac monitoring device was provided for the hospital’s Keith Shaw Cardiac Surgery Unit during 2009. This was requested by one of the unit’s senior nurse managers, Bernadette Hannon, and funded from general donations received by the hospital.

Patients require cardiac monitoring to satisfy medical staff they are prepared for surgery and, following surgery, patients require cardiac monitoring for abnormal electrical activity for a minimum of three days. Monitoring is managed by use of bedside monitors which may be viewed at the bedside and at the central monitor showing all patients, and is located at the nurses’ station on Keith Shaw Ward. Bernadette says the unit has been so grateful to receive this additional portable monitoring telemetry device and explains its value: “Patients wear this telemetry monitor and, from the nurses’ station, we can monitor their heart rate and rhythm while they walk around the unit.  This cardiac activity can be picked up throughout the ward as far as the exit. We encourage patients to get up and walk around – this prevents post operative complications arising, following surgery and, most importantly, it begins their preparation for discharge home.”

The Keith Shaw Unit was opened in 2000 and each year takes care of 500 cardiac surgery patients from Dublin, the eastern and south-eastern regions of the country and also from the northwest. The unit comprises a 15-bed ward and an 8 bed Intensive Care Unit. Patients present with cardiac disease and or requiring heart valve surgery and operations carried out include coronary artery bypass grafts and valve surgery. The hospital has three cardiac surgeons.

The unit is named for the late heart surgeon, Mr Keith Shaw, who played a lead role in the development of cardiac surgery in Ireland.

Contact Us

St. James’s Hospital Foundation
St. James’s Hospital
James’s Street
Dublin 8

Telephone 01 428 4086
Email foundation@stjames.ie