Mr Jones Acute Pain Case Study

Analysis
Despite the fact that Mr Jones has had a surgery to repair his hernia a year earlier and is about to undergo another one shortly, he was in very good spirit. The whole process from when I came into the ward and Mr Jones called out to me that he is in severe pain till now has all been eventful and educating at same time. Mr Jones was given morphine to manage his acute pain. Several preparations are available in the pre-operative period for pain management. These include intramuscular analgesics and opiates such as morphine (Hughes 2005). Morphine was used as a drug of choice in the management of Mr Jones acute pre operative pain. Though it has several advantages that are well suited for small intestinal obstruction management like its effect on slowing down the motility of the gut (Rodney 2010) which in the case of small intestinal obstruction is good, it causes nausea and vomiting as some of its side effect due to its direct action and stimulation of the chemoreceptor trigger zone of the brain (Daniels 2008). Though anti-emetics were prescribed to counter the effect of nausea and vomiting, their effect was not profound and this caused some delay in the operative process.
In addition to recording the temperature, I was involved in the monitoring of the fluid and electrolyte balance. Fluid balance was monitored hourly as one of the senior sisters explain to me the importance of a maintaining its balance. Haemodynamic stability is crucial as hypovolaemia can occur quickly because of the obstruction, fluid levels can rise quickly due to decreased gut movement causing the bowel to distend and losing its functionality of absorbing water and minerals thereby leading to fluid and electrolyte imbalance (Torrance and Serginson