Hi everyone, new LVN here. Been working about 4 months now. I work in and acute care hospital on Med-surg. Came into work yesterday and had a patient that had a CVA, He was on NG tube feedings and awaiting for a peg tube placement. Anyways, I came onto the floor and went into his room, stopped the feeding and disconnected the tubing and got ready to check for placement. I grabbed my syringe and put air in. My charge nurse was with me. I pushed the air in and all of a sudden the formula that was in the tube came flying out of the patients mouth! OMG! it was then I realized, this tube was NOT in the stomach. My charge RN tried and sure enough I heard air, but in his mouth! when I pulled the tube out of his nose, literally only about the last 3 inches of the tube came out! It had NOT been in the stomach. The patient began spitting out all kinds of stuff. His lungs were gurgly (if that makes sense). So I charted everything. Then out of curiosity I decided to look to see if anything was charted about placement being verified on the last shift. I found nothing. We computer chart, not paper. The feeding was going at 45cc/hr.
Ok, so my question is: #1 aren;t we supposed to be verifying tube placement by either injecting air or removing stomach contents? and #2 arent we supposed to chart it?
When the night nurse came back in (She had handed this patient off to me in the morning) I told her what happened. I wasn't accusing her of not doing anything, I just said, this is what happened. She immediately got defensive and said she had given him meds at 5:45 and it was fine. Ok, fine. But she didn't chart that she checked placement.
