National Safety and Quality Health Service

RUNNING HEAD: NURSING
NURSING
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

NURSING1
One of the most important The National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS)
Standards (Greenfield et al., 2015) is recognizing and responding to acute deterioration of the
patients and it is of imperative importance that nurses follow the each of the NSQHS
standards on a daily note, including this one (Gill, Leslie & Marshall, 2016). This standard
focusses on running the right protocols and measures that help the nursing professionals to
adhere to best practice guidelines in acute settings. This includes checking of the vital signs
regularly, applying the emergency medications on right time, taking pulse (White, Dudley-
Brown & Terhaar, 2016) and monitoring the breathing patterns for any distress on a frequent
basis (National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, 2019). While different
department such as neurology, cardiology, CTVS and trauma care has different set of
protocols to check on the emergency signs and deterioration signals, I had my fair share of
experience from my last placement in a cardiac unit.
It was first day in the cardiac unit and my supervisor handled me with two myocardial
infarction patients. The beds of these two patients were placed head to head and I could
almost observe the vital sign of the other while caring for one patient. I began with regular
nursing duties like checking the patient’s prescriptions and relevant papers related to case
scenario. In the beginning, one patient was sleeping and the other was conscious but both had
normal vital signs showing on the monitor and there was nothing to get alarmed about. After
administering the IV medicine to the sleeping patient - I started to converse with awake
patient. I was just hearing about his family – when I heard monitor of the other patient started
blinking, got me alarmed. I ran to my asleep patient found out his oxygen saturation was
continuous dropping below eighty nine percent. The normal physiologically safe limit of
oxygen saturation is 90 to 100 percent and anything 90 per cent can prove very dangerous. I
checked the heart rate on the monitor was blinking at 105 beats/ minute. The patient was
deteriorating at a rapid rate and the patient was having tachycardia and respiratory distress at

NURSING2
the same time. The supervisor told me that I have injected the wrong medicine and soon an
antagonistic drug has to be given if the patient has to be saved. Soon, after she injected the
right medication this time and after setting the ventilator parameter to clinically appropriate
levels, the deterioration was checked and the vital signs were brought under control.
The medication safety standard ensure that the clinicians are safely prescribing,
dispensing and administering the most suitable medications. The standard also make the
patients receive an informed care (National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards,
2019). The nurses in a daily practice should inform the patients about the need of the
prescribed patients and why they are receiving the same (Ongpoy et al., 2017). The nurses,
who are in constant touch with the patients, must be careful while administering the
medications to the admitted. They must use the clinical reasoning while taking decisions
(Monagle et al., 2018). They should apply critical thinking skills before administering a
medication to a patient in their ward (Schuelke & Barnason, 2017).
This experience remains one of the most anxious and thrilling situations of my life. At
first, as I mentioned, my feelings bordered on stress induced high anxiety levels. In spite of
knowing all the clinical guidelines by heart and mind, my thoughts were blotted with
confusion and fear to have failed the patient and myself as a nurse. As I focused more on
helping the patient professionally, something, I suppose my self-confidence, kept wavering
away from me and my hands and feet shook and shivered out of nervousness. May be, it was
observing such a rapid deterioration with one’s own eyes, affected me more as a person than
a nurse. When the supervisor came to my rescue, I felt must better and welded a positive
attitude thereafter to address the acute deterioration scenario.
My feelings about the abrupt deterioration scenario was mixed. The good part was
that the emergency nursing care experience to be delivered at a severe level came very early