Did I do the right thing?

[guest894451]

I'm in my second year of nursing and on my first med-surg rotation. Today was my first day doing the care of one patient by myself.

My patient went for a lung function test and when she came back, they took her off the oxygen saying she didn't need it anymore.

I noticed she was shivering and got her a warm blanket and the shivering nearly disappeared. But not long later I noticed that she was still feeling very cold so I took her vitals and her oxygen had fallen to 81% so I put her back on O2 to get her oxygen back to the goal the doctor had for her 88-89%. Her temperature was 36.1.

I told my buddy nurse about the situation and asked for some advice or if she could check on her because I was worried but she just told me to put her to bed and give her a warm blanket which I had already done. (I actually gave her about 5 and she still was cold)

I was feeling very worried like I had not done everything possible to help my patient but my buddy and the charge nurse did not seem to be very concerned so was I over reacting? What could I have done better?

[Shagce1]

Is your instructor on site at your clinical? I would have tapped into him/her for advice. shared my assessment findings and interventions I had already tried. Whenever we find anything that doesn't seem to be "right" or varying from baseline we are supposed to alert our instructor as well as the "real" nurse. Sometimes the nurse might dismiss our findings, but take our instructor more seriously.