Question

You are a RN working in ED, looking after Edith, an 87-year-old with an admitting diagnosis of Acopia. All acute interventions have been completed for Edith, but the wards are full, so she will spend the next 8 hours (+) on an ED trolley in a corridor.

1. What is the impact of a diagnosis based on the labelling of a patient?

2. How do normal changes of ageing increase the risk of Edith developing a pressure injury in this scenario?

Answer 1

1) due to patient being non co operative there are various changes which are going to affect the diagnosis of the patient,

Like there won't be proper history of patient

Won't explain clinical feature if any,

Won't allow to take sample properly,

Won't allow to do radiodiagnosis if required.

So complete analysis will be difficult for the doctor

2) with the increase in age haemostasis is severely affected,

Generally bp is high of non cooperative ones, so increased pressure causes increased blood loss, if any injury happened,

Also if we try to re strain the pt. By external pressure it may cause bone of soft tissue injury due to high fragility