Chip Chick
This woman works as a nurse and has been working in the profession for 11 years. She currently has a patient that she cares for who is in her late 80s.
The patient has severe dementia, cannot sit or stand up, and can’t move much while lying in bed.
She acknowledges that the patient is a wonderful and caring person with some sass and amazing wit.
This particular patient puts her arms around the nurses in the form of a hug, and she often says that they are the greatest people to have come into her life.
Her patient is intensely hungry often, and she deeply wishes that her family would visit so that they could eat food together. The patient is incredibly small and skinny.
“When she came in, it was because she was choking on food. They were already putting her through dialysis, and speech found that she was aspirating everything, no matter what it was. So, she’s strictly NPO–nothing by mouth,” she said.
The patient’s family gathered together, and the nursing team met together separately to go over the options. Then, the family came to a decision to put a feeding tube in.
When the patient’s family informed the nursing team of their choice, the patient had taken out her IV and bled a lot.
She joked with both sarcasm and frustration with the nurse practitioner that she was positive the feeding tube would go over smoothly.
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