I had this one pt last week and this has been eating at me. The pt had a right sided chest tube. Suction was d/c'd that day and it was to gravity drainage. The tube was sutured in place. He slept throughout the night but at 5 am he had a 3rd dose of solu medrol which was started the day before. Our techs do hourly rounds on the pts and I will pop my head in to make sure that everyone is sleeping soundly or if they're awake see if there's a problem. He called about 6:15 saying that he was having some swelling of his face. I go in and sure enough his face is markedly swollen. He was having no problems breathing, no problems swallowing and no pain, but just some edema of the face and neck. I immediately call his attending (but it was his partner who was on-call)who said it was probably edema related to the solu-medrol. I explained what a change it was from 5 to 6:15. He said he'd see him first when he came in. I relayed all of this information back to the pt and reassessed the fact he was having no breathing/swallowing problems or pain but told him to call me if he was having any further changes or problems.
At shortly after 7 as I'm giving report to the next shift, the doctor comes out to the nurses station and says the pt has crepitus and he was going to call the pulmonary sugeon who put the chest tube in. He also calls his colleague who is the true attending. Myself and the oncoming nurse go in because frankly neither of us has ever seen crepitus and wanted to have a feel as did many on the floor. One seasoned nurse said that in 15 years she's never seen crepitus in a pt. I finish giving report going in to the pt to again reassess for any discomfort or difficulties in airway or swallowing noting that his right eye was beginning to swell which I relayed back to the oncoming nurse and document the whole series of events that had occurred.
I go in that night and look at the pt board and see he's not in my section, so I ask the CC why. She said that the family was very upset and felt I didn't do enough to help him out or didn't check on him enough through the night. He was checked on by someone hourly! I also found out that when the dr who visited him called the attending he was asked if the chest tube was connected to suction and he said yes. When the attending came in around 1pm and found it wasn't (because the thoracic surgeon d/c'd the suction the day before) he went through the roof and the pt suffered with the edmea of the crepitus from 5am until at least 1 when the suction was applied and the edema started to go down. The chest tube was repositioned and the surgeon went ballistic that he wasn't called first. However later that day (he was another nurse's pt) he had a relapse of the crepitus and quickly fixed. I had the weekend off and thought he was discharged and found he's on another floor. Not upgraded, not downgraded but just another med/surg floor. All of a sudden we all had to attend an in-service on chest tubes and crepitus and they referenced that pt (not knowing it was me who had him that first night).
A friend of mine told me to make sure my insurance is paid up in case he decides to sue. Now I'm all paranoid that I did something wrong. I'd never seen crepitus. Many of the other more seasoned nurses have never seen crepitus. Even the educator who's been a nurse for 30 years says shes only seen it twice. My first thought was allergic reaction (but to solu-medrol?) and wasn't really buying that it was swelling from the med, but I would not have thought crepitus. What do y'all think?
