Multisystem Failure

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Homeostasis and Pain Management in the Patient with Multisystem Failure Assessment of Patient Immediately following the patient’s unresponsiveness, the nurse should check all vital signs. Airway and breathing would be a priority. This would include checking her respiratory rate, depth of respirations, and oxygen saturation level. Her confusion could have started from a decrease in oxygen supply, and if it were worsening, it would cause the unresponsiveness. Auscultating her lungs with a stethoscope for rales, rhonchi, or wheezing would give insight on a cause of heart failure and/or obstructive lung disease. An oxygen saturation level would easily be obtained by a finger pulse oximeter. Included in the vital signs would be obtaining a…show more content…
One can only assume that this patient would not follow commands, and therefore, could not safely consume water to assess her swallowing function. Because of this reason, the nurse would not use the acetaminophen order. She would then look at using the standing order of Morphine. With any geriatric patient, the goal is to start low and go slow. The nurse would use the 0.05mg/kg IV dose of Morphine, and reassess her pain afterwards. If her pain was not relieved, as evidenced by the FLACC scale, she could then give her another dose of the 0.05mg/kg Morphine. The only way to tell if this choice of pain management was successful would be to keep reassessing her with the FLACC scale. If the number kept decreasing with each assessment, her pain would be improving. It is important to keep her comfortable, but it is also important to give only enough medication to do so. Morphine could knock out her respiratory drive if she was given too much. It is also wrong to let her suffer in pain, so there is a fine line of pain management. Repositioning the patient and trying other means of pain relief, besides medication, would be beneficial with this geriatric patient. Comforting words and decreasing anxiety could reduce pain and fear. The important thing to do is to keep assessing those five key points of the scale and treat…show more content…
The crew on the ambulance was the first line of rescue. Once at the hospital, the emergency room nurse would take over her care. Along side of her should be an emergency room technician who can start an IV and draw blood. A physician should be the next person to step in and assess the situation. Once tests start being ordered and the respiratory status changes, a respiratory therapist should be notified. The nurse should immediately take action with obtaining an airway, and provide adequate oxygenation until the respiratory therapist arrives. These four people would be the core group of people to take care of the patient’s immediate needs. An anesthesiologist may be needed if the patient warranted intubation, but an emergency room doctor should be able to do this without them. Of course in that scenario, a few other nurses should step in to help with the patient’s increasing needs. With the tests that are ordered, a radiology technician would arrive to do the x-ray. The nursing staff would do the EKG, and the respiratory therapist would do the

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