Nursing Is For Men Too

Patient Santiago is a 6 year old male with no allergies who came in to the Emergency Department yesterday with complaints of dehydration and general malaise. Mommy says that he hasn't been eating well and he isn't using the bathroom. He was admitted to the unit during the middle of the night and has been receiving maintenance fluids through his IV access since this morning. Santiago has been sleepy but he's easily awakened. The doctor ordered for Santiago to get a Foley catheter this morning to keep track of his urine output and send a sample to the lab for examination. He also has an ultrasound of his kidneys ordered for later this morning. He is not on any medications currently. Mommy and Daddy are Spanish speaking so you can use an interpreter phone or find a Spanish nurse if you need translation. When we heard the word Foley we both looked at each other with panic ghost like expressions. For those that don't know what a Foley catheter is let me explain. A Foley catheter named "Foley" for short is a small plastic tube with a balloon on the end that is inserted into your bladder through your urethra. This tube is inflated and urine travels from the bladder through the tube and into a collection bag. So in other words we are going to take a tube and have a Macy's Day Parade march through your urethra all the way to your bladder. If you don't know where your urethra is, it is your pee hole. In our brief nursing career the amount of Foley insertions we had experienced were few to none, especially in children. If there was one thing that we knew, it was that this Foley insertion was not going to happen without there being kicking, screaming, and tears. Standard protocol had us sifting through charts so that we could gather as much information as possible in the hopes of sounding somewhat intelligent before walking into a room of strangers. After we compiled our knowledge and mapped out our plan of action, we approached our ground controller, also known as, Professor Gabriel for clearance to takeoff. Up until this point we had been nervously taxiing the runway waiting for the green light to proceed. In our morning meeting we discussed how we were going to review Santiago’s lab work and assess our patient. Soon thereafter, we would look at the doctor's orders and prioritize what would be done and in what order. In the end, the long awaited Foley parade was first on the agenda. After meeting with our professor Jasmine and I felt more confident in our plan of action. Luckily for us, Santiago’s primary nurse was Spanish speaking so communication was no longer a factor that plagued us.