I am a RN with 2 years experience in Med-Surg and this is the first time this has happened to me. I was precepting a nurse new to our facility and we were taking care of this young patient for a kidney stone. She had came back from surgery and was sleeping. When she woke up I noticed she had tremors and was stuttering a lot. (Interesting) Family said it was new to this admission but was doing that before surgery as well.
A few hours later she started crying and reported 10/10 pain. So I had my orientee start by giving her 15mg of toradol IV. No relief, so then 2 tabs of 5/325 norco. Waited an hour or less, patient still crying, so we gave her 2mg of IV morphine.
Patient is now stating she can't breathe, we check her vitals, everything is normal except heart rate is 105 (I'm assuming from pain and crying). We put her on 2L of oxygen. The family tells me that she was receiving dilaudid at another hospital and that's all that works for her. (This patient is an adult but her parents were speaking for her).
I say OK I'll try calling the doctor and see if I can get an order for dilaudid. We called the doctor and he said no, give a one time dose of another 2mg of morphine, we wait a bit because we had just given morphine and then give the one time dose. Patient is asleep, family complain hand is swollen so I have my orientee stop the fluids for a bit and put ice on her hand.
It's now shift change, patient awake crying in pain again and family in room is yelling at my orientee that we are terrible and not helping her daughter. I'm hearing it from other family member on the phone as well. I explained to them that the doctor said no, and they told me to call a different doctor for the dilaudid.
Night shift nurse says "go home we'll handle it from here". I'm back to work again in 2 days (don't have the patient of course) but I'm hearing from the nurse who has the patient that they are going to write a complaint about my orientee and myself.
I am worried and lost some sleep over this because this is the first time this has happened to me and I'm nervous. Am I in the wrong and was there more I could have done? I feel guilty.
