I posted a few days ago casting a wide net for responses on PCAs so with your helpful answers and an assessment of my own I now have to ask:
-As an OR nurse how often do you program a PCA?
-How often do you document what is occurring with an in-patient's PCA throughout surgery?
-How often does the anesthesiologist have you double check their programing?
-Did you have training on PCA pumps when you began in the OR or were you expected to carry over previous knowledge you had on PCAs?
In my unit we have a hard-copy paper Analgesia Flow Sheet that should be in the chart of every patient with a PCA however there has been an issue with this. If the patient is In-patient then the PCA is often times disconnected with no documentation as to what happened, if the PCA is hooked-up in the OR the flow sheet is not placed in the chart for PACU to reference.
I'm very excited about this project and will hit the ground running on Tuesday with it so thanks in advance for your responses :)
