Posts Tagged ‘basic principle of ICU nursing’

What if patient becomes unresponsive?

Monday, January 26th, 2009

This must be hard for a newbie ICU nurse like me. I ask this question so that I will be prepared to know what should I do when my patient becomes unresponsive. Nursing process should always be utilized. What should be done first? First thing that needed to be done is assessment. The thing to focus on here is pretty simple- keep in mind the basic question: “What’s wrong with my patient?”. The goal as a new ICU nurse is to try to figure out what the patient is doing- but when the patient does something happened unexpected, there is just no substitute for experience. So go get some help: get the resource nurse, and get the team. This points up the most basic principle of ICU nursing: it is a group process. As a new nurse, we should know where we stand, what are our roles and most of all always communicate what is happening to the patients with the resource nurse.