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Student Nurse Reflective Essay

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On July 10th, I received a patient into care at 1915hrs, she was admitted with nausea and vomiting and later diagnosed with Clostridium difficile. At the beginning of the shift, I checked her vital signs as a part of my routine assessment I found the patient was tachypneic, tachycardic and had pitting edema. When asked, the patient said it was normal for her to have high respirations and a high heart rate. The patient’s history and progress notes had no mention of these issues, I notified the primary nurse and she told me to monitor the situation. The patient’s situation did not feel right, I reassessed her and her respirations continued to increase to 39 resp/min and her O2 saturation was 88%-90% on room air. I thought to myself "What should I …show more content…

I'll get the nurse and she can tell me what to do." This is an example of my biggest barrier to transitioning from a student nurse to a registered nurse. I do not have full confidence in my nursing judgement and I have become somewhat accustomed to my judgement being checked by an instructor or preceptor In this instance, I trusted my instinct, I put the patient on 2L of oxygen and reassessed the patient’s O2 saturation, it increased to 95%. I knew that because I have had experiences with patients with low O2 saturation in the past clinical rotations. For the other issues, I was not sure how to move forward, I notified my preceptor and she stated that the doctor needs to be called for new orders. I was thinking over the scenario and trying to predict what order the doctor would give, at the time I had no idea. The doctor ordered Lasix IV push, Ventolin and Atrovent. I knew that Lasix is used to excrete fluids from the body and Ventolin/Atrovent allow the patient to breathe better. Eventually, I was able to figure it out; the patient was given too much fluid

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