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Full download A Nurse’s Survival Guide to the Ward Ann Richards file pdf all chapter on 2024
Full download A Nurse’s Survival Guide to the Ward Ann Richards file pdf all chapter on 2024
Ann Richards
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Titles in this series:
A Nurse’s Survival Guide to Drugs in Practice
A Nurse’s Survival Guide to Leadership and Management on the Ward
A Nurse’s Survival Guide to Critical Care
A Nurse’s Survival Guide to Mentoring
A Nurse’s Survival Guide to Acute Medical Emergencies
A Survival Guide to Children’s Nursing
The right of Ann Richards and Sharon L. Edwards to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s
permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright
Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website:
www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright
by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).
Notices
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge
in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds or experiments described
herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent
verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. To the fullest extent of the
law, no responsibility is assumed by Elsevier, authors, editors or contributors for any
injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence
or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or
ideas contained in the material herein.
ISBN: 978-0-7020-7831-6
Printed in Poland
Last digit is the print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Content Strategist: Poppy Garraway/Serena Castelnovo
Content Development Specialist: Kirsty Guest
Project Manager: Anne Collett
Design: Patrick Ferguson
Marketing Manager: Kristen Oyirifi
Preface
In the preface to the earlier editions of the book we drew attention to the ability to
provide good evidence-based care for all patients on our ever-busier hospital
wards. We think this is still what all practicing nurses, both pre- and post-
qualification, seek to achieve. We hope that this little book will not only continue
to be a constant companion during those first early days in practice as a student
but also provide answers to some of the many questions you will continue to ask
well beyond your qualification and your early years as a staff nurse.
The idea for this book originally came from a student nurse at York who was,
at the time, working in a frantically busy medical ward. His pleas for such a book
were so heartfelt that Christopher Goodall, a lecturer at York, originally started to
write the sort of text that the student felt was needed.
Unfortunately, Christopher was unable to complete the book and we thank
him for passing on to us the idea of his student, Jerome Whitfield, together with
his enthusiasm for this text to be developed.
The book has been thoroughly revised and updated for this updated edition in
response to suggestions from our readers. It is divided into six sections covering
aspects of care and management on the ward today. Areas where there have been
advances in our knowledge base in the past few years have been expanded. Here,
you will continue to find information on emergency situations, assessment,
observations and measurements, clinical procedures and investigations and
pharmacology, as well as brief descriptions of common medical and surgical
conditions using a body systems approach.
However, nurses need knowledge that support and enhance their ability to
practice at the bedside so the legal issues, health and safety, professional practice
issues and ethics in nursing have been updated to reflect this. Holistic approaches
to care continue to be included along with the sections related to fundamental
procedures to expand areas of nurse interventions such as oxygen administration,
fluid and electrolyte balance and nutrition.
The book is still a compact and pocket-sized companion that we hope will
come to be regarded by its users as a friend. The aim is to provide the factual
information needed to assist in your provision of holistic care. Although the book
is aimed primarily at nurses, we feel sure that its content will be relevant for all
those working in healthcare today. However, nursing practice is complex and
includes many facets of care. Therefore, this book is not meant to replace all your
nursing textbooks but contains material that nurses can refer to while working.
xv
xvi Preface
You may need to refer to additional texts (see further reading section at the back
of the book) either at home or from the ward, hospital or university library for
more detailed information.
In writing this book it has been decided to use the terms she to refer to the
nurse, and he to refer to the patient. The writers acknowledge that there are many
male nurses and female patients; however, it was chosen to use these terms for
brevity and clarity and does not imply anything about the nature of nurses or
patients.
We are sure that this book will serve the reader well whilst working in clinical
practice. It will give confidence to nurses working in all areas of patient care. We
hope that you will continue to enjoy using this little book well beyond your
student days and that it will provide the support and practical information needed
for you to improve your understanding of disease and, alongside this, your pa-
tient care.
If you find areas missing or sections which you feel are not relevant or useful,
please e-mail us your suggestions. You can contact us via the publishers. We will
both be very glad to read and respond to your comments and incorporate your
requests in any future editions of the book.
Ann Richards and Sharon Edwards
Hatfield and Uxbridge, 2018
Section 1
Section Outline
1.1 Organizing your work 1 1.2 Emergency situations 8
l Wounds
l Nutrition status
l Intravenous (IV) infusion and other invasive lines
l Risk assessment for:
l Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/pulmonary embolism
l Pressure ulcers
l Malnutrition
l Prioritizes care
l Care of relatives and significant others
l Record observations/monitoring and documentation of care
l Key role in the checking, administration and understanding of prescribed
drugs
l Works with the multidisciplinary team:
l Medical and surgical teams
l Physiotherapist
l Occupational therapist
l Social worker
l Pharmacist
l Radiologist
l Medical technicians
shifts, confined spaces, busy and noisy ward area, lack of teaching
rooms, time pressures and increase in workload.
Your job and its organization Section | 1 3
are critically ill, and so need to be understood and appreciated but also
recognized that they cannot and do not always save lives.
l Knowledge of nurses: confines practice to a level of knowledge/
education.
l Government legislation.
stoma nurse, outreach nurse or diabetic nurse (these roles will vary
depending on the work environment and patient group)
l The legal implications in practice, e.g., litigation of the extended role
l The scope of professional practice e the rules governing healthcare pro-
fessionals (NMC, 2015; PSA, 2015)
demanding and there are pressures that can make the support of learning for
and from others difficult. Duffy et al. (2016) identified that because of the
difficulties presented with taking on the mentor role, sometimes students
experience substandard levels of mentoring. There are mentoring preparation
programmes as well as suggestions of a supportive network or community of
mentors. However, despite the discussion around the mentorship role, the
barriers and difficulties, there is little doubt that mentors can greatly influence
nursing students’ learning in and from clinical practice.
Physiotherapist
l Assist with patients’ respiratory function.
l Preserve existing motor skills, restore mobility and consider the role of all
limbs whether strong or weak.
l Work towards reducing stiffness, contractions and spasticity.
l Reeducate motor function, coordination and balance.
Occupational therapist
l Restore patients’ ability to perform activities of daily living e relearn
practical skills if necessary.
l Evaluate patients’ perceptual and cognitive functions.
l Adapt objects that improve daily living activities.
l Assess the need for modifications to the home.
Dietitian
l Advise on nutritional and fluid requirements e whether it should be liquid,
thickened or pureed food.
l Advise regarding enteral or parenteral feeding requirements and regimens.
Your job and its organization Section | 1 5
Social worker
l May discuss long-term or short-term care options with patient and family.
l Support families and patients by assisting with social and financial issues.
l Arrange benefits.
l Provide careers with home adjustments.
Other staff
l Secretarial support may be required.
l Porters may be involved in transporting patients’ specimens day and night.
l Local chaplains, priests or relevant officials of all religions, when there is a
need for their services.
l A designated ward clinical pharmacist is invaluable but may not be
available in all areas.
l Technicians responsible for the equipment to service, repair and develop
equipment.
Working as a team
Teamwork is vital if care is to be carried out expertly and efficiently in any
clinical area. The team consists of not only the doctors and nurses and those
above-mentioned disciplines but also many other personnel from both within
and outside the hospital. These may include:
l the police,
l security,
l specialist hospitals,
l laboratories, e.g., technicians, laboratory staff,
l support staff, e.g., phlebotomists, ECG technicians,
l theatres,
l specialist nurses, e.g., diabetic, wound care, resuscitation, pain,
l other wards/departments, e.g., pharmacy, X-ray,
l community carers,
l helping agencies,
l primary healthcare teams,
l relatives and friends,
l patients,
l ambulance personnel.
Liaison and effective communication within the team are essential to
ensure optimum patient care.
Deviations from the normal score points a total is calculated. There are four
trigger points that determine a clinical response (RCP, 2017) as follows:
l A low national early warning score (NEWS 2) (1e4) should prompt
assessment by a registered nurse
l A single (red score) (3 in a single parameter) is unusual but should prompt
urgent review by a clinician
l A medium NEWS 2 (5e6) is a key trigger and should prompt an urgent
review by a clinician or acute team nurse
l A high NEWS 2 (7 or more) is a key trigger and should prompt emergency
assessment by a clinician/critical care outreach team
These levels should alert the nurse to deterioration in the patient’s condi-
tion and those that require additional clinical assessment (Fig. 1.1). These
parameters form the basis of the NEWS 2 scoring system. It is used to aid early
detection of patients’ deteriorating conditions on acute general or surgical
wards. The NEWS 2 is a simple scoring system to be used at ward level
utilizing routine observations taken by nursing staff. Nurses are identifying
those patients at risk of deterioration and then scoring according to their
physiologic parameters.
Physiologic Score
parameter 3 2 1 0 1 2 3
Respiration rate
≤8 9–11 12–20 21–24 ≥25
(per minute)
Systolic blood
≤90 91–100 101–110 111–219 ≥220
pressure (mmHg)
FIGURE 1.1 The national early warning scoring system. Before making any clinical use of the
NEWS2 chart, please download the high-quality, full-colour version from the Royal College
of Physicians website: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/national-early-warning-
score-news-2.
10 A nurse’s survival guide to the ward
Health, 2002b). The report prompted hospitals across the country to concen-
trate on introducing early warning scores. This was a directive as there have
been concerns regarding the capacity problem in the provision of critical care
facilities in acute care trusts. Therefore, there was growing concern about the
management of critically ill patients outside the intensive care setting.
Attempting to reduce what was often referred to as suboptimal care prior to
admission to critical care areas, it was decided to provide expert advice in the
management of these patients.
The comprehensive critical care (Department of Health, 2002) report
recommended that critical care services should provide for those patients who
were critically ill and patients at risk of critical illness and those recovering
from it. This stimulated the setting up of a number of critical care outreach
programmes across the country. Currently there are a number of courses that
HCP can undertake to facilitate their development in identifying a deterio-
rating patient and instigate the necessary interventions as follows:
l Acute life-threatening events recognition and treatment (ALERT)
l Awareness why anticipating and responding is essential (AWARE)
l Bedside emergency assessment course for healthcare staff (BEACH)
The wards are given criteria based on the ABCDE initial assessment of
physiologic abnormalities similar to the NEWS 2. If a patient meets the
criteria for deterioration, early interventions can be initiated. By using the A-E
assessment, ward nurses are prompted to inform the doctor or contact the
outreach team to attend the patient.
Ward staff are able to call the outreach team for patients with abnormal
physiologic variables or specific conditions such as shock, excessive bleeding
or upper respiratory obstruction. The aim of this using the A-E initial
assessment is that it prompts early recognition, intervention and treatment of
those patients at risk of deterioration from any cause or a cardiac arrest.
A majority of hospital trusts provide early recognition courses for ward-
based staff. Hospitals use the ALERT course to provide education for ward
nurses and junior doctors (Smith et al., 2012) and to improve their knowledge
of vital signs and identification of patients at risk, in an attempt to reduce the
number of patients requiring admission to critical care.
700
A
ABCDE, airway, breath tiofi, disability and examination; AVPU, Alert Verbal Painful
L Unresponsweness
; ' " ; sgo Coma Scale.
A
l Listen to the patient’s chest, are there any rattling noises (indicating
secretions)?
l Is bronchial breathing absent or reduced (may indicate a pneumothorax,
a medical emergency) or pleural effusion?
l Is air entry equal on both sides?
l Circulation:
l Is the patient pale or cyanosed (may indicate peripheral vein collapse
(Hb)
l Fluids e fluid balance chart, input and output, increase in weight
l Gastrointestinal tract (GIT) e abdomen, surgery, drains, blood loss,
Cardiac arrest
This is the cessation of cardiac mechanical activity with no clinical cardiac
output. If immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not started, death
or serious cerebral damage will result. Nursing staff should promote CPR
training and be the driving force behind a hospital’s resuscitation team.
Cardiac arrest may be primary or secondary.
ABCDE
assessment Appropriate interventions
A Airway obstruction is an emergency; obtain help immediately;
airway opening; airway suction, insert airway, intubation may be
required.
Provide high flow oxygen
B Provide appropriate oxygen administration considering
subgroups of patients, e.g., COPD
If respiratory rate inadequate consider bas mask, noninvasive
ventilation, intubation
Consider appropriate medication/treatment for respiratory
disorder depending on cause bronchodilators, chest drain
insertion
C Insertion of IV cannula is required, take bloods for routine
investigations; fluids should be commenced, consider smaller
volumes for patients with heart failure (closer monitoring, check
for fluid overload)
If chest pain e early 12 Lead ECG; Aspirin; Nitroglycerin;
Morphine
D If changes in level of consciousness is thought to be drug induced
e check drug chart e consider antidote if appropriate
Nurse unconscious patients in the lateral position
E If full exposure of the patient is necessary for a proper assessment
respect the patient’s dignity
ABCDE, airway, breathing, circulation, disability and examination; COPD, chronic obstructive air-
ways disease.
14 A nurse’s survival guide to the ward