Pain Meds for You
I walked into the patient’s
room and his adult children stood around his bed concerned about his pain after
surgery. He was still in a lot of pain
days later, but told us he didn’t know what the nurses thought was a lot of
pain when they asked him how he was feeling.
He just kept saying he was OK figuring that’s what they wanted to hear.
I asked the nurse about him getting
medication. I knew she was busy with
other things but thought it was important that she knew he was not wanting to
complain but was still hurting. The
nurse agreed and went about her work. I
waited a reasonable amount of time and when she didn’t come, I went back to her
desk. She was still at her desk doing
paperwork. I now asked her “when you
assessed his pain on a scale of zero to ten, what number did he give you?” The nurse looked at her papers, looked at me
and jumped to her feet. Obviously
realizing that she, nor anyone else had properly or appropriately assessed his
pain, within 3 minutes she was in his room asking about his pain and
distributing his pain medication.
No comments:
Post a Comment