Jodie Colella
March 2015
Jodie
Colella
,
BSN, RN
Tuttleman OR
Pennsylvania Hospital
Philadelphia
,
PA
United States

 

 

 

When my patient woke up from surgery today, I offered her Percocet for her pain that was prescribed from her surgeon. The patient stated that she was very "sensitive" to pain medicine and could not take most narcotics due to severe vomiting. I asked her if she had ever taken Dilaudid for pain and she stated that she was reluctant to take it but would try the medication because her pain was so intense. As her pain level became tolerable I started to review her discharge instructions. Her particular surgeon had always given prescriptions prior to the day of surgery for patient convenience. I asked what pain medication he had given her. She looked sheepishly and stated that she did not know that her pain was going to be this bad so when the surgeon gave her a prescription for Vicodin, which always made her throw up, she said nothing. She had assumed she would just take Tylenol and not need anything stronger. At this point it was 5 pm and mostly everyone had gone home including the surgeon and resident. I paged the resident, he never called back. As I was about to page the attending, our OR charge nurse came by before she was about to clock out. She heard about my dilemma. She contacted the attending over in his office and volunteered to go get the narcotic script on her own time for the patient (narcotics cannot be called into pharmacies and the office is a ten minute drive away). I could say this surprised me but I would be lying because Jodie always places the patient's needs before her own. When I told the patient that Jodie was going to get her prescription she said "Who does that?" and I said "Jodie does that, that's who she is."