Reference no: EM133928218

Question

I currently work in the Emergency Room, and due to our wide variety of patient populations, we receive unexpected and critically ill patients daily. Our emergency department performs focused assessments on approximately 95% of our patients. Children and infants are exceptions to the rules, as we must achieve more in-depth evaluations due to their inability to state their discomfort so a comprehensive assessment is performed. Subjective data collected from patients are the chief complaints resulting in them visiting the ER, their pain, location, severity, medications taken, and allergies. Objective data collected by the nurse are the vital signs, abnormal findings, physical examination such as the hair, skin, and nails to rule out hydration, and laboratory tests such as the patient's potassium and sodium levels and other electrolytes balances. The typical patient population visiting the Emergency room is young adolescents to the senior population. We do not specialize in the infant and children population. We have another hospital or entity that specializes in that group. Still, ever so often, we have parents bringing their children due to an emergency and wanting to find the closest emergency care for their sick child. In the case of a minor, we want to collect.