I am not a nurse but I knew this would be the perfect place to ask help with my anatomy homework. My teacher told our class it would be easier to ask someone in the health professional career field if we were having trouble with the questions. I hope you guys don't mind! We were given a scenario and have to answer two questions in great detail. I've been working on these for 11 hours but came up with nothing.
Scott, an overweight, unconscious 10-year-old boy is rushed to the ER by his father at 7:00 a.m. Upon first examination the boy appears comatose. He has a very low blood pressure (80 over 50) and a rapid heart rate (120 bpm), classic signs of hypovolumic shock. A quick oral history indicates that the boy has recently been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, has been put on a low carb diet, and prescribed twice-daily insulin injections. Scott was non-responsive when the father tried to wake him for school.
Additional oral history is that Scott was at his Grandma Louise's house yesterday evening from supper time until 11:00 p.m Grandma Louise swears Scott only had a plate of spaghetti and garlic bread but no sweets and she gave him a syringe of insulin right before dinner. Since he doesn't like shots, she let him take the insulin orally. She also thinks he may have a bladder infection since he was in the bathroom a lot last night "Passing water". She gave him several glasses of cranberry juice cocktail to help.
*Emergency room diagnosis is nonketotic hyperglycemic-hyperosmolar coma
Q: Consider both the changes in blood pressure and osmolarity and discuss what is happening to organs such as the liver and brain.
Q: To stabilize Scott's condition, choose between fluid treatment( IV solutions) and insulin treatment and why?
Do you know if professor ever assigned anything like this during previous semesters? Hopefully there is a curve, and you do well on the assignment. It was good you submitted something. At least now you can say you tried to research and find the answers. If she acts like a butt and grades harshly, I agree with above posters about reporting her. Seriously, this looks like something I would be assigned in my pathophysiology or pharmacology class...except more information is given, the scenario isn't strange/rare, the patient's illness is discussed in reading, and the questions pertain to the actual scope of the class.
I'm glad I kept reading responses before I typed my OWN response, which would have been something along the lines of "this is NOT a second-week Anatomy class homework assignment (seriously...ANATOMY I???). And then to say this is a pre-requ for a dental hygiene program....ridiculous.
So now I'm wondering if, just perhaps, the instructor gave this impossible assignment SO THAT the students would follow her instructions to "talk to a healthcare professional if you have any problems with the assignment". Would I be overthinking this to suggest that the instructor KNEW this was over-the-top, NOT a realistic scenario, and NOT something these students should be expected to know....and it was a learning experience in and of itself to show how things can sound "all medical-like" and make NO sense in the big picture? And that a healthcare professional reviewing this question would tell the student to start thinking outside the box, and not take at face-value everything anyone tells you is correct....to dig deeper?
I don't know. Maybe that's too far into this to be the real story. Maybe the instructor is an idiot.
But unless the OP becomes another Drive-by Poster....we ought to get some feedback soon....yes?
JustBeachyNurse, LPN
13,957 Posts
I'm really curious now, did you show this thread to your instructor? Did you turn anything in? Did you complain or question? How did it work out?