April 7, 2012

Tonight is a full moon so it has been very busy, especially in the Labor and Delivery Department. There were many women who were in labor and two women who needed to be taken to the OR (operating room). I got to go into the OR with a woman who had given two previous vaginal births and did not want a Caesarean Section for this baby but her blood pressure was too high and they needed to get the baby out ASAP, luckily the baby was full term. The patient needed to go completely under anesthesia which meant that the doctor needed to get the baby out as soon as he could before the anesthesia started to effect the baby. I was surprised of just how fast everything went because one minute they were cutting into the patient to get to the uterus and then the next the doctor was pulling the baby out. The bay came out with good skin color and didn’t show any signs of being affected by the anesthesia. I then watched the doctor and nurses begin to sew up the uterus and then stitch up the skin where the incision had been made. It was very fascinating to be able to see the different muscle and fat layers, and of course all the blood. I was also very impressed by how small the incision was and how good it looked once it was sewed and cleaned up.

I also realized just how important wrist bands are for the safety of the staff and the patient. A CODE was called which means that a patient has no pulse and it lets the rest of the staff know there is an emergency going on and for the proper staff to respond ASAP. Once Lee and I were almost to the room, the CODE was called off. The patient had wished to be DNR (do not resuscitate), but was not wearing a DNR wrist band. The nurse in charge of the patient did know the patient was DNR but the first nurses who called the CODE were not aware. If the patient was being transported or getting an ex-ray done and all of a sudden went into CODE, the staff’s first response would be to take emergency measure to resuscitate the patient. But if the patient did not want to be resuscitated and was due to not having a DNR wrist band, it could become a big legal issue for the hospital. Always make sure that each patient has the correct wrist bands on at all times. The patient did end up passing away shortly after the code was called, and I then watched the nurses “prepare” the body so when family members came to see the patient one last time, they would look a little more presentable. This would include repositioning the patient, putting in dentures if patient had any, raising the head of the bed slightly and covering them up with blankets. I also watched the nurses put the patient in a body bag so the morgue could come pick the body up when family had left. After doing blood work they found the patient died from a heart attack.