Role of Exposure Nurse in Managing a Patient with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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NURSING
Description
I was required to undertake the role of the Exposure Nurse within the context of the
Mrs Lilly Joseph who was admitted in the Emergency Department with an infective
exacerbation of her Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. During the morning shift, I was
entering the room post-handover in order to introduce myself to the patient. However, I
noticed that Mrs. Joseph who was on 2L of supplemental oxygen applied through nasal
prongs, is showing increased rate of breathing.
Feelings
When I saw her condition early in the morning, I became extremely concerned and
tensed about her keeping her age into consideration (65-years old). However, on retrospective
I think getting tensed is not applicable under nursing profession. According to Veenema
(2018) the job of nurse is challenging as they are required to deal with critical patients. Thus
in order to execute quality treatment, the nurses is required to keep their nerves under control
and execute therapy plan as per the evidence-based practice.
Evaluation
My duty was to administer intravenous benzyl penicillin injection at 1.2 gram.
However, observing her condition, I refrained temporarily from giving the injection and
immediately conducted patient assessment. I recorded her body temperature and vital signs.
As per patient’s brief, Mrs Joseph was admitted with shortness of breath and chest infection
with previously reported cases of asthma. I immediately contact the Leadership nurse in
charge who asked me to position the patient in the Fowler’s position. I positioned Mrs Joseph
in standard Fowler’s position by raising the bed at least 45 to 60% from the floor and bend
her knees towards her chest. According to Son and Lee (2013), Fowler’s position helps to

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NURSING
ease the process of breathing by increasing the overall surface area of the diaphragm. The
leader nurse also instructed me to inject Salbutamol. According to Patel et al. (2013),
salbutamol is a short-acting selective beta2-adnergic receptor agonist. It helps in the
relaxation of the smooth muscles of the lungs and thereby increasing the airflow in the lungs,
facilitating breathing in asthmatic patients. After administration of salbutalmol, I injected IV
benzyl-penicillin as the patient reported nil allergies (NKA: document). My effective
communication skills with the leader nurse helped me to implement appropriate interventions
on time. According to O'hagan et al. (2014) effective communication skills is an important
skill in nursing profession which helps to increase the quality of care for the patient. The
administration of medication was followed by further assessment of the vital signs of the
patients in order to ascertain the positive disease prognosis.
Analysis
It is the role of an exposure nurse to indulge in the effective problem solving skills
and clinical reasoning skills. According to Yoo and Park (2015) effective problem solving
skills helps to increase the overall quality of care for the patients in order to improve the
health and well-being. It is also the duty of the nursing professionals to indulge in effective
communication. Initially in the nursing practice, the effective communication is mainly
highlighted in the domain of patient to nurse communication for increasing the provision of
the therapeutic relationships with the patients. However, according to the latest professional
code of conduct by the Nursing and the Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) (2018) the
effective communication must also be expressed with the fellow team members in order to
facilitate the effectiveness of multidisciplinary team. Under this scenario, I showed effective
communication with my team mates in order to seek help about the immediate intervention in
order to ease the breathing of Mrs. Joseph. However, in order to make the care-plan approach