Post-Anesthetic Care Nursing NSCC 7625

Learning Intentions

Within the context of learning to care for post-anaesthetic patients, learners will have the opportunity to use reflective critical thinking, systematic inquiry, communication, collaboration and professionalism to:

• Further develop confidence and competence as a critical care nurse by expanding and applying your technology as practice with post-anesthetic patients.
• Use reflective critical thinking to integrate multiple sources of knowledge about PACU nursing into existing knowledge associated with caring for critically ill patients.
• Critically analyze the context and develop an understanding of the meaning of the individual's surgical procedure and post-anesthetic care.
• Further develop of collaborative approach to create partnerships with patients, family and members of the health care team.
• Reflect on and further develop communication skills in the context of learning to care for patients in the PACU (e.g., patients experiencing altered levels of consciousness).
• Continue to integrate a variety of sources of knowledge such as personal, professional, theoretical, research and experiential to support nursing practice.
• Develop and implement a personal vision of professionalism as a critical care nurse.

Learning Outcomes

At the completion of the theoretical and clinical experiences within this course, the learner will be able to:

• Apply knowledge related to pharmacology, patient assessment and monitoring, and surgical interventions when providing post-anaesthetic nursing care.
• Apply practice standards and frameworks (e.g., oxygen supply and demand, ethical decision making) to provide care with post-anaesthetic patients and family members.
• Develop clinical abilities to:
• Perceive the needs of individuals.
• Recognize meaningful patterns.
• Anticipate changes in patients' response.
• Differentiate the significance and prioritization of aspects of care.
• Determine short term patient goals in collaboration with patients, family members and other members of the health care team.
• Provide competent and compassionate nursing care to support patients', family members' health, healing and comfort.
• Identify and use resources to promote patients' and family members' health, healing and comfort.
• Provide nursing care that encourages collaboration, communication and partnerships with patients, families and members of the health care team.
• Articulate the influence of the critical care environment (temporal, social, political, economic, physical and ecological) on communication, collaboration and partnership in the nurse, patient and health care team relationships.

Effective as of Fall 2003