Obtaining staff for the Rapid Response Team

From HMCwiki

One of the first concrete decisions that must be made when designing a Rapid Response Team is deciding how to obtain the staff for the Rapid Response Team ? Do you hire additional staff, seek additional funding, assign nurses with no patient load, or make no adjustment to the patient load of the nurses?

This is a critical issue, and almost ended the MET at Alta View Hospital before it began. As they researched, they found that traditionally the literature suggests that the team be staffed with ICU nurses. However, Alta View had only 2 ICU nurses that often couldn't’t be spared from the ICU for a long period of time. However they did have ED nurses with variable staffing and are very busy, and so it was an issue there as well to be able to spare a nurse from there.

They considered trying to get a grant, getting an extra nurse in-house, but finally resolved that they could use existing ED and ICU nursing staff if they were very creative and flexible. They decided that if they could maintain a code team in the past, they could sustain an RRT. As Ruth Kleckner, Educator said, "It needed to happen and because it needed to happen they would find a way to make it happen."

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