I am currently on my cardio placement at ICU. Before we treat pts we must read all the inpatient and admission notes to get a timeline of events that have happend while the pt has been in hospital. I found this to be very hard as I find it extremely difficult to read the handwriting. It is very time consuming and on a number of occasions I have missed critical information which is essential background knowledge to keep in mide when treating a cardio patient. for example if I was to see suction a pt and they had high blood pressure it is not so much a worry if the pt has a history of HTN as this is his "normal" BP.
On a number of occasions my supervisor has corrected me when I have missed these points. In the future I will try to be more particular with my note reading and ensure I haven't missed any important points by asking the nurse in charge how the pt has been going etc.
sorry its short but I really didn't have much to write!
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I remember a similar experience in 2nd year when another student and I missed the fact that the patient had a spinal stenosis, which our supervisor informed us was very relevant for the problems this patient had. I learnt then that reading notes thoroughly and asking for assistance to read bad handwriting and looking up anything you don't know is really important so as not to miss the important stuff.
Bad handwriting certainly does not help a bit! I find it really difficult to track the pt's 'timeline' from their admission to their surgery and if there was any complications that happened during as this is really relevant to us but sometimes I just can't read the notes and it becomes somethign important.
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