Bladder Scanner

Can you please word your question clearly.

Nursing assessment or interventions fall under Nursing care planning....not medical orders.

You dont need an order to bladder scan. You may often see a dr order them q 4 or 6 hours but if you think you need to do it for whatever reason you can just do it.

Yeah . I didn't think you need a Doctor's orders to bladder scan a patient since you are assessing them at that point. You do need a order to straight cath a patient . I had a MD questioning me why do I have to call him for an order to straight cath a patient after bladder scanning the patient . Based on his belief that should be done out of nursing judgment !!! Of course I explained to him that we can bladder scan all we want but if we need to intervene with a foley or etc , we need an order from him .

I had a doctor ask me the other day why I bladder scanned a patient. We took their foley out at 3pm (start of my shift) and by 11:00 (end of my shift) the patient hadn't voided. Uhhh are you really asking me that? Policy states that if a patient doesn't pee within 8 hours of foley removal, call the doctor. If I call the doctor and say a patient hasn't voided, they're going to tell me to bladder scan and then, based on results, straight cath. Why WOULDN'T I bladder scan this patient?? Then the doctor refused to start fluids because "this patient has been here 6 days, I'm not going to be the one to start fluids". Really?! Luckily I had this patient for 5 days straight and little home slice voided the next shift.

We now have protocol retention orders which are a blessing! No more calls for orders to straight cath.

i think its a faculity policy. At our hospital you have to have a doctors order to bladder scan. Even though when you call the dr. and tell them patient is having trouble going or is retaining urine the first thing they ask is Have you scan them?

We do not have to have a physician order to bladder scan, that's silly! In my opinion that is a part of nursing assessment. Good lord next you will need an order to assess someone's lung sounds using a stethoscope...

New question:

We just implemented applying nursing charges when a pt is bladder scanned for the first time. Anyone else do this?