How would you prioritize your assessments and activities? How would you describe your critical thinking process and how do you organize and prioritize implementation of care?
You have been assigned 4 patients on an Intermediate Medical Care Unit. Two of the patients are post myocardial infarctions at various stages of their infarctions with multiple types of arrhythmias, the third patient is having drastic blood sugar fluctuations 218 down to 50 within minutes and its rebounds back up with changes in mentation and the fourth is reported to be having frequent TIA’s. One of the MI patients is having some dizziness and your TIA patient is presenting signs of impending stroke.
How would you prioritize your assessments and activities? How would you describe your critical thinking process and how do you organize and prioritize implementation of care?
ANSWER: According to the situation,
1st priority to third patient with low blood sugar level should be treated first because the normal blood sugar level in fasting is 80-100 mg/dl, but for the pateint’s blood sugar level is down to 50 mg/dl and also the patient already in status of changing the mentation. So if not treated immediately it may leads to brain failure.
2nd priority should be given to TIA pateint, because TIA is presenting just signs of impending stroke. Stroke does not happen suddenly first sign will be present then after some days stroke occurs. As compare to sudden lower blood sugar level this become second priority.
3rd priority should be one MI patient who is having dizziness. The patient is on medication as he/she is post MI patient. Light dizziness may be because of any other causes.
4th priority to another post Mi patient because there is no more signs of MI attack again, so just observation is needed for this patient.
