I (that's NKW, silly) had 3 similar incidents whereby I brought a ventilated or at least intubated patient down to Imaging Department and was kept waiting in the waiting area ventilating the patient on portable O2 tank. This was because the staff in the Imaging Department had, in their infinite wisdom, sent in another patient even though they had informed the ICU or CCU nurse that we could send our patient down.
Obviously, the waiting area of the Imaging Department is not the ideal venue to monitor and nurse a critically ill intubated patient, possibly on a ventilator. Apart from the very real danger of having the portable O2 run out, the possibility of an accidental extubation is ever present and intubating outside of the OT or critical care environments can be a most harrowing experience. There may be no properly functioning sucker. Your assistant is probably the most inexperienced nurse they could spare. The trolley will have limited manoeuvrability and not all necessary equipment or drugs may be readily available.
Hence I made 3 separate incident report forms after each incident and finally today (6 July 2005), a meeting was held with the Imaging staff, ICU Nurse Manager, Navjeet and Dr. Susan Crispin.
Imaging suggested that they will send one of their staff up to ICU or CCU in all these cases to help coordinate the transfer.
If the Imaging staff thinks that there will be a significant delay (perhaps more than 10 min), he will inform the Imaging Department which may then slot in a short case if there is one available. He will also help with the porterage. If there are short delays of perhaps 5 minutes no other CT Scans will be allowed.
I agreed to give the suggestion a try as it seemed to be a reasonable solution.