Patient emergency in hospital room

[martinman]

You answer a call signal and find a patient on the floor, bleeding. You accidentally get blood on your hands and uniform. What will you do?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Take care of the pt first (there are suposed to be gloves in every pt room) and then wash it off. You then write an incident report and go to occ health.

[yousoldtheworld]

Well, since this is in the CNA forum, and I don't know whether you're directing it towards aides or nurses or both, I'll answer what I would do as an aide:

Turn on the call light...and, at the hospital I worked at, we had "emergency" buttons on our locator badges for situations like this. Simultaneously, yell for help/the nurse. Some facilities have the nurses carry phones specifically for emergencies like this. I would not leave the patient unless it was an absolute necessity to get someone, and no one was responding to my calls.

And, it's important for an aide NOT to move the patient in this situation before the nurse is there to look at the patient, unless the patient is in a spot or position that causes further immediate danger and it's necessary to move/reposition them THAT SECOND.

After the patient was taken care of, then I would clean off my hands and as much as I could, report to the nurse for an incident report, and go to occupational health (if available in the facility...most places have a specific course of action for employees to follow in these situations.)

[masaya]

call for help,never leave the patient,stabilized the situation,then go and wash your hands.If you got injured (reason why you got blood on your hands and uniform)then it is a must to proceed to ER for your treatment then make your incident report plus you must inform your supervisor,i beleived there must be a policy and procedure that matters safety guidelines specially in a hospital setting.Thanks.

[callmekipling]

1) Airway, breathing, circulation (thank you, emt school)

2) Holler for a nurse, any nurse that's free. Call bells are non-emergency. State the room number. Something like, "Need help in 13!"

Once the nurse gets there, stick around and help. Stay with the pt unless asked to do otherwise.

After that, wash off, incident report, etcetcetc.