B. V.: A Case Study

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B.V. is a 42 year old male patient admitted for severe angina chest pain. He previously had coronary artery bypass surgery a month ago. His incision site from the surgery was dry, intact with no inflammation present. He currently was not on any pain medications upon admission. He tested positive for hepatitis C and was homeless. He had a history of drug and alcohol abuse and left hip replacement. He is currently taking medications for hypertension and diabetes through Medicare. When getting report on the patient, the nurse stated that the patient kept asking for pain medications every hour but didn’t look like he was in pain. He was in a comfortable position in bed while laughing and watching television. The previous nurse thought the patient just wanted pain medication since he is previous drug addict. This situation reminded me of what I learned in Medsurge about trusting your patient if they …show more content…

I wasn’t quite sure what to believe. I knew I wanted to assess the patient and speak with him first before jumping to conclusions. My preceptor and I went to go let the patient know we were going to be his nurses for the day. Once we entered and started doing our assessment on the patient, he seemed like he was fine. When I asked him to rate his pain on a scale of 1-10, he stated it was 10. I asked him where he was experiencing the pain, he stated it was where the incision site was (upper chest) and all over his body. He demanded the best pain medications we have immediately. Other than what he subjectively told us, he seemed okay. His vitals were normal, his blood work came back with nothing alarming and a urine culture was negative. He was a previous drug abuser in the past from the past medical report. I started to think he just wanted pain medication just to abuse them again. I do admit after assessing the patient, I did in fact jumped to conclusions. Was I starting to be biased towards my

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