ATI Video Case Study
If you were the nurse in this situation, which client should you see first?
In a hospital setting, nurses are responsible for taking care of a large number of patients who require different types of care. To take care of all these patients, the nurse needs to develop a method of meeting the needs of all of their needs (Hendry & Walker, 2014). To do so, the nurse has to come up with a framework that will dictate what activities to undertake and which ones they can delay. The process of identifying the urgent activities that require immediate intervention and those that do not are is what is called priority setting. Priority setting involves arranging activities in a particular order depending on urgency and importance of the activities in each category (Hendry & Walker, 2014). To facilitate the priority setting process, nurses can use several known and established frameworks. These include the nursing process, the ABC framework, Acute vs. Chronic framework, Emergency vs. Routine framework, and the Safety and Risk reduction framework.
In the ATI video, the nurse is receiving valuable information concerning patients who need attendance. Based on the information given, as a nurse, I would attend to Lenny Williams, the patient in room 6307, who is experiencing pain in his right calf. According to the observations given by the assistant, the patient’s calf has turned red. When a calf is swollen and is turning color to red, then the problem could be deep vein thrombosis, a condition where there is a blood clot in the leg that is limiting blood circulation. Vein thrombosis is a severe condition that can be life-threatening in severe conditions; therefore, it needs immediate attention.
From there, I would attend to Nancy Jones, the patient in room 6310 with an infiltrated IV line. Infiltration is a condition that occurs due to leakage of the IV fluids or medications to the tissues surrounding it. Typically, infiltration results from improper placement of the catheter or, in some instances, patient movements can result in the catheter dislodging from the lumen blood vessel. If left unattended, infiltration can lead to infections. Therefore, to ensure there are no infections, the patient needs to be given ampicillin, which is an antibiotic. From there, I would attend to Justin Foster, the patient in room 6314, who is requesting pain medication. The pain medication is due and, therefore, needs to be given to the patient. Furthermore, the patient does not have any other pressing medical conditions; therefore, he can wait until the right time for administering the pain medication comes (Herlitz & Horan, 2016).
Finally, I would attend to Anna Chen, the patient in room 6315, and who is diagnosed with gastritis. Gastritis is a common condition that results from infection of the stomach lining with the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers. The disease can either be acute or chronic, depending on specific factors; however, it is not a fatal condition and is easily treated using medication. Taking this into consideration, plus the fact that the patient already has assistance, I would attend to her last.
Identify the priority framework you are using and the rationale for your selection.
When attending to the patients, I would adopt the Emergency vs. Routine framework. In this prioritization framework, the nurse gives more attention to the patients indicating new and urgent signs and symptoms, some of which have fatal consequences (Suhonen et al., 2018). In our case, the Lenny William’s red calf poses the most significant danger and, therefore, requires the most urgent attention. On the other hand, the routine checkups that need little attention are given the back seat as these can experience a slight delay without many negative impacts on the patient, for instance, Anna Chen with gastritis.
References
Hendry, C., & Walker, A. (2014). Priority setting in clinical nursing practice: a literature review. Journal of advanced nursing, 47(4), 427-436.
Herlitz, A., & Horan, D. (2016). Measuring needs for priority setting in healthcare planning and policy. Social Science & Medicine, 157, 96-102.
Suhonen, R., Stolt, M., Habermann, M., Hjaltadottir, I., Vryonides, S., Tonnessen, S., … & Scott, P. A. (2018). Ethical elements in priority setting in nursing care: A scoping review. International journal of nursing studies, 88, 25-42.