Essay On Conscious Sedation

Recently I encountered a situation at work where I was not qualified to perform an assignment. Four hours into my shift, I was required to pick up a newly admitted patient that needed an immediate procedure (off of the unit) where I would be responsible for administering conscious sedation to a non-intubated patient. I have only been off of orientation for three weeks at my current job, so I am just learning the policies and procedures. In addition, I did not receive any education regarding conscious sedation in orientation. The instructions I received was to “put a bunch of drugs in your pockets and make sure he stays still on the table.” I explained my concerns to the charge nurse, but she insisted that I continue with the assignment. Because I still felt that I was unqualified to perform the task, I called my nurse manager and explained my concerns. I am thankful that the nurse manager stepped in and assigned a senior nurse to accept the assignment, but I feel that I was labeled as “uncooperative” because of my actions. Since then, I have reviewed the North Carolina’s Board of Nursing’s (2015) position on conscious sedation of the non-intubated patient which states, “The RN administering moderate and/or deep procedural sedation/analgesia must possess in-depth knowledge of and validated competency”. I believe that I was …show more content…
The stance of the Board of Nursing is that the employer should utilize the Complaint Investigation Tool Instruction Booklet to determine if an incident warrants a report to the Board of Nursing. According to the North Carolina Board of Nursing (2016), the Complaint Investigation Tool serves “as a framework through which employers, nursing leaders, and the Board of Nursing can evaluate and analyze practice events or errors with consistency and fairness”, but does not have any recommendations for peer