what do you do?

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Scenario: You are looking after a post-operative patient who has had vascular surgery..(bi-femoral graft). When you got him back from recovery room, you were able to locate his dorsalis pedis and post tibial pulses well..however, 2 hours later you can't find them in one of his legs...what do you do next? this was a question on an interview!

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Specializes in ICUs, Tele, etc..

Use a doppler or get ur charge nurse to try for you, they'd want u to say use ur resource.

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Check it with a doppler immediately, and if not present, then call the surgeon stat. If your charge nurse is not immediately available, have another nurse try for you. But no pulses by doppler, especially when you did have them and on a vacular surgery patient, can become an emergency very quickly.

Usually there are standing orders to do that.

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haha, I replied to the other one, apparently this one got posted on here twice

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Specializes in CCU/CVU/ICU.

I agree with the above posters regarding dopplers...though another thing to take into consideration is "are his feet warm? equally? less so than before?" . Though you obviously need to let surgeon know, if foot is warm and not cold/mottled, it's not as urgent a scenario than if it suddenly becomes pulseles, cold, and mottled.

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