PACU Clinical Report
On December 5th through 7th, I spent my clinical experience in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital. The PACU is a Critical Care Unit where patients go following surgery to receive specialized care. The nursing staff is skilled in identifying and managing complications in patients after they received anesthesia. The patient’s vital signs are closely observed, fluids are given, and pain is managed as the patient returns to their baseline in level of consciousness. When the patient first arrives to the PACU holding area the nurse receives a summary of the patient’s surgery from the OR nurse and the anesthesiologist. The report includes how the surgery was tolerated, amount of fluids given, blood loss, medications
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The patient received a sedative to make the patient sleepy, so he wouldn’t feel pain during the procedure. Two pads were placed on the patient’s anterior chest. The shock lasted less than a second and the doctor then stop to reassess the patient’s rhythm. The patient woke up quickly and was successful converted to a normal sinus rhythm on the first attempt. In lecture we had learned about using a defibrillator in emergency situations and using it on different settings to convert a patient back to sinus rhythm but I had never seen it in person. It was interesting to see how much the patient jolted once the shock was delivered, so I understand why it’s so important for everyone to stand clear when delivering the shock. Also, during this day a gentleman in his 50’s had previously had procedures done at Fatima but had an adverse reaction while waking from the anesthesia. Previously he had woken up agitated, pulled his monitor equipment off and a code gray had to be called. During this visit the anesthesiologist administered additional anti-anxiety medication to help the patient transition …show more content…
They utilize teamwork and have advanced assessment skills. The staff did a great job of explaining the steps of the process, medications, equipment and showing up practice EKG strips. During my experience fortunately non of the patient’s had experience any life-threatening difficulty but Liz did a great job of providing us with “what-if” scenarios that made us apply much of the knowledge we had learned in lecture. In the future I would love to develop some of the confidence and be able to utilize teamwork like these nurses demonstrated. I think this was a great rotation and should definitely be continued for the future
The patient received a sedative to make the patient sleepy, so he wouldn’t feel pain during the procedure. Two pads were placed on the patient’s anterior chest. The shock lasted less than a second and the doctor then stop to reassess the patient’s rhythm. The patient woke up quickly and was successful converted to a normal sinus rhythm on the first attempt. In lecture we had learned about using a defibrillator in emergency situations and using it on different settings to convert a patient back to sinus rhythm but I had never seen it in person. It was interesting to see how much the patient jolted once the shock was delivered, so I understand why it’s so important for everyone to stand clear when delivering the shock. Also, during this day a gentleman in his 50’s had previously had procedures done at Fatima but had an adverse reaction while waking from the anesthesia. Previously he had woken up agitated, pulled his monitor equipment off and a code gray had to be called. During this visit the anesthesiologist administered additional anti-anxiety medication to help the patient transition …show more content…
They utilize teamwork and have advanced assessment skills. The staff did a great job of explaining the steps of the process, medications, equipment and showing up practice EKG strips. During my experience fortunately non of the patient’s had experience any life-threatening difficulty but Liz did a great job of providing us with “what-if” scenarios that made us apply much of the knowledge we had learned in lecture. In the future I would love to develop some of the confidence and be able to utilize teamwork like these nurses demonstrated. I think this was a great rotation and should definitely be continued for the future