Oxygen by mask

ChuckeRN, BSN, RN · Dec 6, 2011

If you have written protocols for situations like chest pain / MI, then yes you can without MD orders.

Tofayelbd · Dec 6, 2011

Nurse should have enough knowledge when a patient have need oxygen. So they have need to do perform this duty.

mazy · Dec 6, 2011

Homework? Again with the homework?

JGTB · Dec 6, 2011

You would need to check your hospital's policy on oxygen administration. At my hospital for instance, on the rehab floor a physicians order is needed while in surgery/medicine there are medical directives that cover the order. Obviously if it was an emergency you would do what you need to do but technically you need to follow the policy of the institution.

joanna73, BSN, RN · Dec 7, 2011

Every acute care floor I worked on, the nurses gave O2 as they saw fit, based on their assessment. They would then document and inform the doc after. I would never wait to receive the order. If you do, your patient could code and / or be dead.

I'm in LTC now, but we do the same. I'm not waiting for an order if my resident is in distress.

RescueNinja · Dec 10, 2011

I agree with other posters. I would never wait for an order to put my pt on O2 if I felt it was necessary. You do need to be careful, but you will learn who can tolerate the O2 and who can't.

Now I work in Emergency and we have a lot of directives that allow us to do many things independent of the physicians, but even in other departments I've worked in I would never hesitate to give something like Oxygen if my patient needed it.

Once, while working on the floor, I got into a little bit of a heated discussion with a nurse who didn't want to go over 2 Lpm of O2 via NC because she was waiting for the doc to answer her page. It was her pt, but I was in charge that night and he was satting in the low 70s obviously very uncomfortable and in severe distress on the 2 Lpm.

I popped on a NRB and he came up to the high 80s. He ended up in the unit on BiPAP by the end of our shift.