Is it common?

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Specializes in Oncology, radiology, ICU.

When a patient you are caring for starts having chest pain is it common in your hospital to try and send them to a monitored unit before even treating the chest pain? I work on a cardiac unit and this is what happened recently. I couldn't believe that any nurse would let a patient suffer for over an hour with radiating chest pain 10/10 on the pain scale without calling a doctor just because they weren't a cardiac unit and didn't have protocol's for chest pain. Do you really need a protocol to call a doctor? I swear the longer I work at this hospital the more it's starting to scare me.

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Specializes in Peds Hem, Onc, Med/Surg.

Noooooooo. Maybe its different because we are a chest pain center. We call the doctor immediately and they give us orders. If the doctor doesn't call us back within a certain amount of time we have to call the attending in the chest pain area of the ed.

If there is something wrong with the patient, as a nurse, we need to get a hold of the doctor. Especially if its something that can be really really serious such as chest pain.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

it's not common, but i've seen it happen. they don't know what to do, so rather than doing something "wrong," they do nothing. not understanding of course, that "nothing" is the worst "something" they can do.

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Since when is calling a doctor when you have concerns ever considered "wrong"?

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
since when is calling a doctor when you have concerns ever considered "wrong"?

you'd be surprised. (or maybe not). a lot of places regard the doctors as sacred, and you'd better not "bother" them with something so trivial as a full blown code. not saying it's right. just saying i've seen it.

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.

We have a hospital wide protocol,..CP= page the doc, then O2,monitor, EKG, and SL nitro X3 (if SBP >100),..then the doc decides what to do from there.

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Specializes in ER; HBOT- lots others.

no, we have somewhat of a protocol. and then we also have a rapid response team. its wonderfully awesome, it works great! now when it comes to it being a guest of a pt, thats a total different story!!!

-H-RN

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I'm still just a student (LPN), but we covered this last semester and we were taught to administer 2 L/min O2 (assuming there is no other standing order), collect vitals, then call the doctor or team leader, depending on the facility and policies.

If nitro, etc. whatever is ordered prn, obviously, we'd administer it.

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