Personal Narrative: My Experience With A Nurse Patient

For this patient centered experience paper, I interviewed a woman in her eighties who was admitted to the emergency room after experiencing some respiratory issues and had a pulse oximeter reading of below ninety. I will refer to this patient as “Mrs. Jones”. Mrs. Jones was admitted to a hospital in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She spent several days within this facility until she was healthy enough to return home. Mrs. Jones then tells me that this is where her daughter had all of her children and was one of the reasons why she went there. She has never been there before, but she was living with her daughter ever since she broke her hip a few years back. This paper will summarize Mrs. Jones’ experience with the hospital. I asked her a few …show more content…
She explained that she had two interventions done besides medication and that the second was the one area of concern. The first intervention was the constant oxygen with nebulizer treatments. The nurses changed out the oxygen when needed and the treatments seemed to always be announced every two hours on the dot. The second intervention was the IV. Mrs. Jones has small veins and had to have a butterfly needle inserted into her right arm. This would have been fine, except for the fact that a nurse unintentionally removed it. Mrs. Jones is not too sure how it happened, but that she is glad that she has a medical background. By removing the IV, it had started a hematoma and caused a bruise on her arm. Mrs. Jones immediately puts pressure on it and informed the nurse. The nurse apologized for the mistake, but explained that this type of incident happens all the time and that she was in no danger. Mrs. Jones felt that her nurse had no compassion towards her at that moment and wanted to ask for someone else. “Compassion is a fundamental part of nursing care. Individually, nurses have a duty of care to show compassion; an absence can lead to patients feeling devalued and lacking in emotional support” (Bramley & Matiti 2014, p. 2790). To promote both physical and mental health, compassion builds human relationships and ties people in difficult times. In …show more content…
Jones about the medications that were given to her in the hospital. I asked if she fully understood the medications and the dose that was given. I also asked if the nurses explained the medications to her. Mrs. Jones stated that she knew all the medications that she was taking, including the type, dosage, and the reason that she needed them. Even though she knew all her medications, the nurses still explained what she was being given and why. All of the nurses who took care of her did check her wrist band and checked to make sure that they were giving her the right medicine. She did note that one nurse had to go back to the medication room after checking her wristband. I asked her if she thought if that was a safety issue and she said that the nurse had made a mistake by having so many patients, but did notice there was a problem. The safety of medicine is part of quality care and the safety of the patient. These medications are intended to promote healing and improve quality of life. They are also intended to reduce patient suffering, but any medication has the potential to cause ill effects. “Medication errors and adverse drug events may put the patient in serious danger. Medication error is any mistake happening in the phases of the medication process, but most errors happen in the administration, dispensing, preparation, delivery and documentation of prescribed, ordered and given medication”(Metsala & Vaherkoski 2013,