GIB

[jessi1106, BSN, RN]

Not much traffic here..guess us GI nurses are few and far betweeen?

I'm sure we have all seen a ton of GIB's.

Whats the worst you've seen??

Mine: s/p scope where they "fixed" the bleed. Pt thritysomething, ambulatory. Plan was to d/c him in the afternoon.

Then within one hour THREE hats full of Frank blood (and me frantically calling the resident who told me to continue to "monitor").

Pt ended up dropping to 30/20 and losing conciousness. I did have to call a code, and this was the only time I have ever run 3 units of blood at once. (Yes, at least I did think to put all kinds of access in him).

He made it...but that was the quickest drop I have ever seen.

[brownbook]

Hi, not any great story. It seems like a lot of Allnurses sites are getting less responses and or less interesting, and or there is only so many questions, comments, nurses can make?

I hate GIB. They scare me to death. I think I have intentionally forgotten any horror stories. The only one I have a clear memory of is from when I was the 11 pm to 7 am nursing supervisor and honestly had no idea what GI nursing, scopes, etc. involved. We did not have an on call GI team, I had to "hope" I could get a GI tech and moderation sedation nurse to come in! They didn't want me to have the OR tech on call be the GI tech because of course if I had a stat OR case that would mess things up more! I had never worked GI. (I did transfer to out-patient surgery later and have since done GI nursing.)

Anyway a bad GI bleeder was admitted to ICU, I (thankfully) don't have a real clear memory but I know the on call GI doctor (who was not our hospitals regular GI doctor, he mainly worked the for profit hospital across town.) Came in and of course needed a Sengstaken Blakemore tube. (Of which I only had a vague idea of what those were.) So I had to go rummaging through our supply room and of course we DID NOT HAVE ONE. One of those cases where we use them so seldom they get old and are thrown away! The GI doc was furious. "This patient is doing to die if we don't get a SB tube down him."

It was a mess. The patient had to be intubated and all we (I) could think to do was send him by ambulance across town to the for profit hospital. I had to send our respiratory therapist in the ambulance with him. I remember at that point thinking I didn't care WHAT doctors, nurses therapists, etc., I had to send with him, just please get him our of our hospital!

The next morning our Adminstrative Nursing director praised me for sending our RT person which apparently wasn't following "protocol."

[GitanoRN, BSN, MSN, RN]

aloha~ just wanted to say hello...and reminisce the times when i was a staff nurse @ gi. in addition, educating the pt. on how to use the "go lightly bowel prep" they would come back and tell me i didn't go lightly i went heavy. needless to say, i also remember informing the patients after their colonoscopy procedure was over, that in order for them to go home they would had to pass gas, for some reason even though i'm a seasoned nurse i always found it funny, especially when they all got together and began their own symphony:lol2: