Breckinridge School of Nursing 2013
A care plan for a mechanically ventilated patient requiring sedation has to be cautiously planned out with the help of a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals. It is very important for a nurse taking care of a patient on a ventilator to deliver high quality care using evidence-base nursing practices. The nurse need to make sure that he/she has a clear understanding of assessment skills and how to perform safety checks on vital life-saving equipment, having this knowledge base will assist the nurse in planning interventions that best fit the patient needs and desires (Alasad, 2005).
The most crucial intervention that I would focus on is the patient’s airway due to if the airway is blocked this would increase the patient’s risk of not breathing and possibly coding by going into respiratory distress, to help decrease the risk of the patient having these airway problems I would focus my attention on doing an assessment of the airway at least once every hour or sooner. The next intervention that I would focus on is the pain level because this is problematic due to the inability of a mechanically ventilated patient to verbalize due to the invasive endotracheal intubation. Therefore I would use tools to measure a patient’s pain that are appropriate for that individual such as a pain picture board or paper with the numeric pain scale on it for the patient to the point to (Ackley, 2011).
The following intervention that I would focus on is mouth care and comfort measures in the ventilated patient due to the patient cannot perform oral care on themselves so that puts the patient at an increased risk for an infection setting up in their mouth. Therefore mouth care with a soft brush should be performed every two hours. In addition to this comfort measure are important so the patient must be turned