patient assess

quote"this is a story about a patient she admitted after a high speed MVA. He was a sweet man who came in with no scratches on him. The docs were just ruling out an abdominal injury. He had been fine for three days and then all of a sudden he started getting a little confused and mean with the nurse - where he had been so sweet the days prior. nurse begged the team for something to be done all night. The team refused.... stating they didn't think it was necessary. Finally nurse got her way, the team agreed to a CT scan -- and they found he had a tiny liver laceration that wasn't found on initial admission, but had slowly grown over his stay in the hospital. By the time they found it, he was bleeding out into his belly (but you couldn't tell by looking at his belly because he had kind of a Santa Claus tummy to begin with). He went straight to OR and got an open belly with a liver repair. But had nurse not noticed his change in mentation and said something about it, nothing may have been done at all."