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Lorazepam

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My coworker had a 40-year-old patient who came to the hospital for alcohol withdrawal. All the nurses on our floor knew him really well because he visits our hospital frequently. At around 7:30 pm, our telemetry showed that the patient was having a heart rate of 180s to190s. We all were still getting report. Charge nurse went to assess the patient, patient started yelling in a loud voice, throwing pillows and a blanket. It turned out that the patient went to the delirium tremens (DT) phase. He was confused, disoriented, hallucinating, agitated, irritated and had muscle tremor. When reviewing the medication administration record (MAR), charge nurse noticed that CIWA scale was not done as ordered and as a result patient did not get enough Lorazepam …show more content…

As a result, nurses were running behind trying to get their regular and stat blood work, assessments, vitals and charting done on time. Hence, it was unfair to the patient as well as a nurse taking care of the patient. If he was given lorazepam as ordered, he would not have gone to DT and this would not have created any unnecessary stress on the nurses, doctors and patient care techs. This clinical case is related to the emancipatory knowledge. Emancipatory knowing is the ability to identify social and political problems of injustice and adds all the elements of experience and context to change a situation (Chinn, 2010, p. 63). As soon as charge nurse noticed that the patient had a change of status and tachycardia, she looked at the doctor’s note, assessment data and MAR to figure out what was wrong with this picture and what needs to change. Also, she found out that the nurse who had this patient during the day had all higher acuity level patient along with 1 code patient. In addition to this, patient was assigned to the room far from nurses’ station. Also, charge nurse immediately called hospitalists as soon as patient had a change of

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