patient care report female overdose

What should I do if I Have Questions about an overdose?

If you have questions, ask your pharmacist or healthcare provider. Do not drink alcohol. Alcohol increases your risk for another overdose. Alcohol can also hide important symptoms that you need to call your healthcare provider for. Do not drive or operate machinery until your healthcare provider says it is okay.

What are the symptoms of an overdose?

An overdose may be mild, or it may be a life-threatening emergency. You may feel drowsy, dizzy, or nauseated, depending on what medicine you took. No specific harm was found to your body as a result of your overdose. Your symptoms have decreased over the last 6 to 12 hours.

What kind of drug overdose can a hospitalist handle?

Handling drug overdoses in the hospital setting. Most hospitalists are well-versed in drugs that depress the central nervous system: benzodiazepines, seizure medications, opioids, muscle relaxants, antipsychotics and, of course, alcohol. Most antidepressants “both tricyclics and the newer agents “and valproic acid,...

How useful are toxicology screens for overdose investigations?

For hospitalists trying to get to the bottom of a suspected overdose, toxicology screens can be immensely useful. That’s particularly true of urine screens, because drugs tend to be more concentrated in urine than in blood “provided the screens are specific enough.

The Case

A 49-year-old woman underwent an uneventful total abdominal hysterectomy bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Postoperatively, the patient complained of severe pain and received intravenous morphine sulfate in small increments.

The Commentary

The lack of details available in the reader-submitted case synopsis limits the already challenging task of identifying an exact mechanism of death. Even if we presume an overdose was the cause, it is my experience from past investigations of similar cases that the exact mechanism of overdose is often not apparent.

Why is it important to report incidents?

It is essential that reporting of incidents should be used in order to learn and develop care standards and used for the evaluation of care in order to help improve the systems and practice seen within the National Health Service.

What is the role of the deputy sister in the Ward?

The deputy sister on the ward adopted the leadership role for the management of the incident, she used a situational leadership approach, which is where effective leaders adapt their leadership style to manage situations. For the incident she used an autocratic approach to the situation. Autocratic leadership is a form of transactional leadership ...

Drug Screens

The first important consideration for this individual is what she took. If those who brought her in are unable to answer this question with reasonable certainty, some investigation is usually warranted.

Past Medical Records

Another consideration sometimes overlooked is the extra effort to obtain past medical records or speak with the patient's current or past health care providers. It is obvious that such efforts can be very useful in establishing what drugs the patient may have taken.

No Stone Unturned

This case points up a critical issue that is familiar to emergency physicians and medical toxicologists alike. That is, all that seems to be toxicologic is not always so.