- A difficult situation which I came
across this week was one of my client's cardiac arrest.
- I went to give the night time
medications to my patient, and at that time he was active and he
had spoken to me. There was no signs of cardiac arrest during the
time of my visit.
- After I came back to the nurse's
station, his wife ran to me suddenly and she was not able to say a
word. She cried loudly and said, "sister please help".
- I ran to my patient's bed side and
saw that he was unconscious and his heart rate was not showing in
the cardiac monitor, his saturation dropped to 40% and BP was 60/
40 mm of Hg.
- I called my patient, shaken his
shoulders but he was not responding. I was very much frustrated and
I loudly called other nurses in my unit.
- I called the code blue team which
is a specialized team of doctors and nurses for managing cardiac
arrest. The team came and started to intubate the patient.
- After the endotracheal
intubationthe patient's saturation, BP, heart rate, respiration etc
was maintained and the doctor said that the patient is fine. Once
he maintains all the parameters by himself then he can be weaned
off from the ventilator.
- The thoughts which disturbed me was
whether I could save the life of my patient?, I was very much sad
as the patient was about to discharge from the hospital this week
and the sudden cardiac arrest in him was a crisis situation for all
of us in the unit and it created a frustrated feeling in me.
- During this situation what I did
well was to call up the code blue team as well as my co-workers for
helping me to save the life of my patient.
- I assisted the doctor for
intubating my patient and then shifted my patient to the cardiac
ICU.
- If I come across to the same
situation next time then I will not get frustrated as frustration
again delays our work and it reduces the time of saving our
patients.
- I will be actively participating in
endotracheal intubation next time as I got an idea of how to
intubate a patient and what all are the needed equipment during the
time of intubation.
Note: Nurses are working in an
environment which they get difficult as well as fruitful
situations. Only thing we have to keep in mind that not to get
frustrated during the time of difficulty. There will be many
helping hands for us to save the patient's life.