Prioritizing care! 9th Blog

Finally, we are in our last week of clinicals before Christmas break and it is unbelievable how time flew by. I can say that my experience in Overlake thus far has been a wonderful experience. The nurses i worked with were very helpful and taught me how to operate efficiently on the floor. I got to work with patients with different diagnosis, but mainly with patients suffering from respiratory infections.

Today, i had a very interesting day at clinicals. My patient did not speak english and i was excited instead of being nervous. I wanted something challenging and here was that opportunity. I went into my patients room while she was still asleep. I gently woke her to take her vitals, but she seemed agitated. In broken english she said that she did not get enough sleep last night due to pain and nose bleed. Meanwhile, her daughter came to visit her and she translated on behalf of her. I asked her to rate her pain and she said that it was a 9 on a 10 scale. I knew that her bleeding was caused due to her nasal mucosa turning dry becasue of dry oxygen which was being administered via the nasal canula. I knew that the patient needs to be getting oxygen, but at that time she was not receiving any oxygen supplementation. I checked her vitals and her oxygen saturation was 87 %. I checked for signs and symtoms of distress, but patient had no such signs and symtoms. Even then I placed her in a fowlers position. I went and got her a ventilator face mask as suggested by my instructor as that would not irritate her nasal mucosa. The patient was hesitant to put on the face mask, but after explaining that this would not hurt her or cause any bleeding, she finally put on the mask. I checked her saturation after that and it was 94%. Then i took care of her pain by giving her ice pack and tylenol. I kept monitoring her saturation and it was stable. Her pain level reduced to 5 after an hour and half. She was feeling much better and was able to sleep. In class, as we are taught to prioritze according to ABC, that is what i tried and implemented before taking care of her pain.