A confirmed learning experience, of the education that I have received so far, is that it is not safe to try and insert a nasogastric tube down a patient’s airway when they are confused and have no desire to swallow. This patient’s albumin and proteins were low, which indicates malnutrition, so the physician ordered a nasogastric tube feeding. The nurse that I followed asked another nurse to assist her with this procedure because she was afraid of getting the NG tube lodged into the patient’s lung, like a story she had heard, of another nurse doing the same thing. The other nurse insisted that, that was rare incident and she would be just fine. During the procedure, I tried to get the patient to suck on one of the mouth sponges in order to attempt for her to swallow, which was unsuccessful. The patient proceeded to gag while the nurse advanced the NG down the patient’s airway, just as I had seen before when another one of my previous patient’s’ received an NG insertion. The main …show more content…
I have had experiences with the NG insertions and a patients O2 stats quickly dropping, but this time my experience was compacted with the same issues plus more to consider while taking care of this patient. This incident made me think critically in order to start putting all of the organ systems together and how they were all playing their part in survival.
The NG tube was an ethical issue due to the fact that my nurse had stated a few times that she did not understand why they were putting this patient through this procedure with her being in the condition she was in, as well as being a