Standard Procedures for ER's/ Hospitals & CPAP?

Kam23 wrote:I am in the hospital right. As soon as I got to the PACU they put my cpap on with oxygen piggy backed between the hose and mask. Last night I had my cpap and it was plugged in using an extension cord. The hospital I am in is very pro cpap.

Good to know, Kam 23- glad you are getting good cpap treatment!

jaycee2 wrote:Back from yesterday's outpatient surgery--

I told all the medical people that I had a cpap but they already knew. No one inspected it. It was for using in the recovery room but I didn't need it. I woke up as soon as the nurse called my name so I never had to use it. There was an additional protocol for cpap patients. After I got dressed I had to wait in a special area on another floor. There I was under observation so they could make sure I was breathing properly. It was supposed to be for two hours but they let me go after one hour because I was doing so well.

I am still groggy today from all the meds. They wanted to stay on top of the pain so I was given several types of pain meds. I must have impacted my sleep last night because I slept longer than usual.

Hmmm..pain meds. I see prunes in my future.

Thanks for your update, jaycee2 & glad to hear you are home after surgery. Also good to know that your hospital has an additional safety protocol of observing cpap patients closer post-surgery (someone is taking cpap seriously!) I with ya on the prunes Try the Sunsweet ones in ziploc bag - they're pretty good actually; the juice is still as yucky as when I was a kid, IMO

jaycee2 wrote:Back from yesterday's outpatient surgery-

Hmmm..pain meds. I see prunes in my future.

Glad your surgery went well. My late Dad and I always used pain meds as an excuse to get Fig Newtons.

I am so sorry you had a bad experience. My local hospital encourages patients to bring their own machines and masks. Spouse or someone close to you should be informed ahead of time how to pack up the machine and make sure it is with you in case you are not able to do it yourself. At times like this you need someone to be your advocate, maybe someone not easily intimidated. I found that the nurse's aides were not well informed about CPAP, I educated them. The RN's hopefully are more up on them. Usually in a hospital setting a respiratory specialist or someone from anesthesiology has to do the initial setup. They want to be sure it is set up and operating correctly to reduce their liability.
I had surgery this year and my advocate knew to be sure if sleeping or unconscious CPAP was going. She didn't have do anything. The surgery/recovery team did a great job of making sure everything was ready and functioning when they were no longer monitoring my breathing.
You could call your hospital and check what their policy is and be prepared ahead of time.

RachelM wrote:I am so sorry you had a bad experience. My local hospital encourages patients to bring their own machines and masks. Spouse or someone close to you should be informed ahead of time how to pack up the machine and make sure it is with you in case you are not able to do it yourself. At times like this you need someone to be your advocate, maybe someone not easily intimidated. I found that the nurse's aides were not well informed about CPAP, I educated them. The RN's hopefully are more up on them. Usually in a hospital setting a respiratory specialist or someone from anesthesiology has to do the initial setup. They want to be sure it is set up and operating correctly to reduce their liability.
I had surgery this year and my advocate knew to be sure if sleeping or unconscious CPAP was going. She didn't have do anything. The surgery/recovery team did a great job of making sure everything was ready and functioning when they were no longer monitoring my breathing.
You could call your hospital and check what their policy is and be prepared ahead of time.

Hi Rachel - thanks for your feedback. I will be prepared for the next time, provided I arrive at the hospital from home (where my packed backup machine is.) My advocate is my daughter who is a nurse (RN); she was not available to be there this time, as I admitted to the ER just after midnight and was in the ER until 7 a.m. My daughter did arrive at 5 a.m. to the ER, and because the rude ER nurse recognized my daughter as a nurse in the same hospital, her attitude changed to 'thinly veiled.' I am not the type of person who is easily intimidated; however, with doping medications on board there wasn't a whole lot I could have done for myself.
Here is another kicker: this hospital is one of three in the county owned by the same company. The company has many other medical sites around the county, so they set up a computerized system several years ago, so wherever a patient goes & sees one of their physicians or has a test in one of their facilities, the results are in the system. This system was designed to help eliminate medical errors, and to help all medical staff be aware of the patients' background, medical needs, and medications/OTC medications, among other things.
My information of being on CPAP was already in the system. When my rude nurse told me "...it didn't matter... " (that I was on cpap), I then told her she could find it in my doctor's notes in the computer system she had access to. She replied " I can't get into your doctor's notes!" [Okay, Moron.] The even scarier part of this is that if I had come into the ER already unconscious, and this attitudinal nurse decided she didn't want to bother to push ONE button to look through my chart on a computer screen, I wonder where I would be now? The point is no matter how much we prepare ourselves, we can't always have someone with us to advocate or watch out for our welfare. It's time the medical community establishes a standard of care for cpap patients and takes some ownership of this problem immediately when a patient is admitted and requests cpap - not eleven hours later.