Interdisciplinary Care Assignment
Name
Chamberlain College of Nursing

Background Information The patient (‘AB’) was an obese (body mass index = 32.75) 62-year-old Caucasian female initially admitted to the emergency room with pneumonia, then transferred several hours later to the intensive care unit (ICU). AB’s diagnosis of pneumonia took place upon admission. AB was diagnosed with type II diabetes 6 years ago. AB is on Metformin (2,000 mg twice daily) and Lisinopril (20 mg once daily). AB does not report having been diagnosed with pneumonia previously. AB’s diagnosis of type II diabetes was made 15 years ago, and the diagnosis of hypertension was made 11 years ago. AB reports that both her diabetes mellitus and hypertension …show more content…
Based on these desired outcomes, the nurse’s tasks centered around the following:
• Ensuring that systolic blood pressure was at a level of at least 90, which was important not only as a measure of septic shock but also of adverse reactions to erythromycin or dopamine
• Using interactions to ensure that the patient’s mental status and acuity were unchanged
• Measuring capillary refill times to ensure that such times were below 3 seconds or trending in that direction
• Checking urine output in order to determine whether there was an upward or downward trend, with a goal of at least 30 ml/hour output
• Checking the color and warmth of the extremities
• Ensuring the existence of a palpable peripheral …show more content…
Given that AB had a bacterial infection that had spread to her lungs and bloodstream, only the kind of pharmacological therapy described above would have been efficacious in managing AB’s health. In terms of the therapeutic modality, the two key participants were physician and nurse. The physician identified the required pharmacological agents (one antimicrobial drug and one vasopressor) needed to address AB’s risk, whereas the nurse’s responsibility was to ensure that the chosen therapies were (a) efficacious and (b) not resulting in side effects harmful enough to outweigh their efficacy. An earlier portion of the assignment already provided detailed information about the specifics of the nurse’s role in this respect. Collaboration took place to the extent that I kept both the physician of record and the attending physician apprised of developments in AB’s health, which in turn allowed AB’s dosages of erythromycin and dopamine to remain the same until her infection had cleared and she could be safely released from the