Essay On Epidural Anesthesia

You are a nurse on a busy labor and delivery ward and your patient has just reached complete dilation after a long induction of labor. The baby is at a zero station, in an occiput posterior position, and the patient is not feeling the urge to bear down due to her working epidural anesthesia. The obstetrician caring for the patient asks you to start actively pushing with the patient, states that they will be back in an hour or so to check on the patient’s progress, and to call them if anything changes. The patient is helped into a lithotomy position and her legs are placed in stirrups. The patient is then instructed when the contraction starts and told to take a deep breathe, hold that breathe in like diving underwater and to push down in their bottom like they are going to have a bowel movement. That pushing process occurs three times during every contraction, until the baby delivers. The provider checks back hourly and notes that the fetal head is slowly descending with effective pushing effort from the patient. The fetal heart rate tracing shows some variable decelerations that return to baseline and is overall reassuring. After pushing with the patient for four hours the baby is delivered via vacuum extraction by the provider due to maternal exhaustion. …show more content…
Epidural anesthesia is the most common method of pain control used for a patient in labor (Women's Health Care Physicians, 2017). Epidural anesthesia reduces the patient’s motor and sensory function to take away the painful sensations related to the labor and delivery process. The epidural does not take away the sensation of pressure that a patient feels when the fetal head descends into the birth canal. Although the patient’s cervix fully dilated, and their body is working to deliver the fetus, the epidural anesthesia blocks the perception of pain and allows the patient the ability to not