New nurse here. Last night I was caring for a patient in CHF whose 02 sat plummeted into the seventies while she was on a cannula and receiving 5 litres/minute. The on-call physician ordered a nonrebreather and said to push her up to 10 litres/miute or whatever it took to inflate the bag. Ten litres did the trick. Her sat immediately came up to 93 percent and stayed there.
Later on in the evening, an aide asked me why the patient's oxygen was not humidified. I told her that it was not ordered, and that normally I see humidification as part of the order. She replied that I did not need an order.
Correct? I don't know. When I asked the nursing supervisor if a) the oxygen should be humidified on a nonrebreather, she said she did not know and b) she was uncertain whether I needed an order for it. I'm presuming the latter is facility policy, but I could not find any policy nor a definitive answer about humidification in the clinical handbook that we are supposed to follow.
So which is it? Do you humidify a nonrebreather? Is that creating a Petri dish or protecting the patient? Necessary or unnecessary? And would you expect humidification to be ordered or something you could do as a nursing judgment?
