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Patent Ductus Arteriosus: A Case Study

Decent Essays

It was around 7 o’ clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday afternoon when my 7 year old patient almost bled out in a hallway at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. This little girl had come back from a cardiac catheterization at 12 pm on March 29, 2016. This patient had a history of Patent Ductus Arteriosus, a heart condition in which the ductus arteriosus vessel fails to close after birth compromising the blood circulation by mixing oxygenated blood with the deoxygenated one (Tetsuya, et al., 2015).
The report I received from the nurse at the Post Anesthesia Care Unit indicated that the patient underwent a cardiac catheterization with access through the right femoral vein and artery. At the puncture site the patient had a 2x2 gauze dressing with Tegaderm and wrapped with …show more content…

Five minutes into her walk, we heard screaming coming from down the hall, several nurses and I ran over and found the girl bleeding profusely from the incision site. One of the nurses helped her down to the floor as I applied pressure at the site without wearing any gloves. Another nurse cut the girls underwear to have better access to the incision site and to apply the sterile gauze directly over the bleeding site. While all this was happening a forth nurse brought a stretcher in which we transferred the patient back to her room. While in the room, we took her vital signs and continued to monitor her vitals every 15 minutes for the first hour. Next, we notified the physician immediately about the situation and he rushed to see her. Thinking back on this experience, I realize that I should have worn gloves before applying pressure in the wound. Evidence based literature recommends that healthcare providers utilize gloves when coming in contact with any bodily fluids (Chau, Thompson, Twinn, Lee, & Pang,

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