Do not be alarmed, the patient is monitored

Many patients are believed to be at risk of dysrhythmias and are felt to require cardiac monitoring. These patients may not be deemed ill enough to occupy a high dependency or critical care bed and are monitored on general wards. Monitoring policies vary widely not only between institutions, but also between individual medical staff. These variations occur due to differing availability of resources and due to the lack of consensus regarding the risk for an individual patient. There is no clear evidence that monitoring patients outside high dependency areas is of benefit; inappropriate use of monitoring may actually increase patient risk.