The moment......

I never thought I would have a moment of "I just saved someone's life."  I thought I would do my job and be a part of lives being saved but never a I did that.

The assignment for the day had the patient's room split, I had one bed and the other nurse had the other bed.  I was in the room taking care of my patient just doing routine patient care when the nurse tech grabbed me because she couldn't get a blood pressure on the patient.  The patient was sleepy but had been all morning but definitely not the same patient I had seen days before.  I checked their blood pressure and got 80's/50's barely, checked her O2 saturations, her breathing, lung sounds, grips, pupils, a full on assessment.  I had the nurse tech to get the nurse that had this patient and when they walked in to room I told them what was going on and their response was oh ok well I gave the patient some pain medications earlier I am sure that is what it is.  I couldn't let this go, so I got an IV set up and started a line on the patient while the nurse tech went to get the charge nurse for me.  The charge nurse called the doctor got orders for fluids, change in the pain medications and that was it.  I had drawn blood because I just knew the doctor would want stat labs but I was wrong.  The patient had muscle twitching with all this and I felt like she really needed labs sent.  I was almost positive her potassium or calcium was going to be up.  I left the patient with the charge nurse and called the doctor and told him that I already had blood from when I started the line and that I felt like her labs were going to be out of sorts.  He gave me orders for lab work only after re-informing me he felt like it was just pain medication.  The charge nurse and I gave the patient a 500ml bolus instead of infusing the fluids at 150ml/hr because her blood pressure was getting worse and not better.  The patient was still lethargic and altered.  We decided that if it was the pain medication like the doctor thought it was then we needed to reverse it and reverse it quickly because our patient was not getting any better.  We had the tech go find the patients actual nurse and to call the doctor for narcan orders.  Which they did and the doctor agreed.  We pushed the narcan and she woke up her blood pressure started getting a tiny bit better only for it to wear off.  The patients blood pressure was still pretty crappy and the doctor actually came and and took a look at the patient, no new orders just run the fluids and wait.  Then the labs came back with a potassium of 6, a doubled creatinine level in just two days as well as BUN.  The patient was in acute renal failure and slamming her with pain medications every four hours was not helping her.  New orders for fluids continuously and to monitor the patient throughout the night.  After two hours of being in the patients room we turned her care back over to her nurse.  I left my shift that night wondering if the patient would still be with us in the morning or if she would be transferred out.  I got back that morning and the patient was still there and awake and talking.  She was still confused but half way back to baseline and she was my patient for the day.  The labs that were taken that morning was much improved and everything was trending back down in the right direction.  I was so relieved to see that the patient was so much better than the day before.  The patient in the same room later pulled me over and told me that if it wasn't for me jumping in and taking over the care of the other patient she felt like she would died.  It was then that I realized she could very well be right.  I could've not done anything and left it for the patient's nurse to deal with and she very well could've gotten worse.  My actions potentially saved a patients life because I refused to just let it go.

Nursing instinct not everyone has it or listens to it, but I am glad I do.

Random blogger

Ha I am so random that I totally never even wrote a body to this post.......I'm a horrible blogger.