Killing Traditional Nursing Duties #3 – NPO after Midnight

fasting Buddha/ via Wikipedia Commons

By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

In early August, on our Facebook page, we asked if there were “old nursing habits” that should be killed off. We received a lot of feedback, which we described in a blog post called “Killing Traditional Nursing Duties #1.” We did another post on the answers to our second question, “When you give IM injections, what site do you most often use—dorsogluteal (upper outer quadrant of buttocks), ventrogluteal (lateral hip), or deltoid (upper arm)?” This also got many comments in response.

Our last question was this:Does your institution routinely follow ‘NPO after midnight’ for preoperative patients?” Here’s some of the comments we received on the blog:

My institution does follow the NPO after midnight for preop patients. I sometimes disagree d/t the time patients may be going to surgery. If a patient is not scheduled for the OR until the following day at 5 pm, why should they have to be NPO after midnight the night before?

…most of the younger anesthesiologists/CRNA’s allowed BLACK COFFEE to be drunk right up until time  of surgery. No dairy or sugar in it, obviously.

The facility that I work for does routinely follow ‘nothing by mouth’ after midnight guidelines. If the patient  is scheduled for a late surgery I may call the doctor and request that the orders be altered and in most cases the doctor’s are agreeable and will change the orders, […]

The Five Most Popular Articles at AJN

Amanda Geer, AJN administrative coordinator—We look at the statistical views and visits of users at AJN‘s home page to determine our most viewed articles, how many visitors listen to our podcasts, what day of the week we get the most traffic, and a number of other categories to make sure we keep up to date on what matters to our readers. We also look at what our users search for. Some of the most common keyword(s)/phrases are evidence-based practice, research, diabetes, cancer, and stroke. We also look at our most popular articles. For the last few months, the following five articles have dominated our top 10 chart (in an upcoming post, we’ll look at the most popular articles on this blog):

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