Pt bladder almost exploded
I’m a new rn in the icu and am on my 3rd day off orientation. I had a pt in HHS who needed hourly sugar checks and insulin drip titrations. Pt came in continent, but had a female external cath (due to anatomy) & restrained on a presidex drip. Output looked normal I checked a few times to make sure there was urine in the container whenever I was in the room. At 6am I emptied 500 out and thought ‘huh… he’s getting a lot of fluids I should bladder scan bc that can’t be right…’ Bladder scanned him and see 3,300 mL and freak out. He was drowsy but arousable so I tried to get him to pee… which did not work he claimed he could not go. Got a straight cath order and called doc. Bc of his anatomy me and three other nurses could not straight cath him and he ended up needing a Supra pubic tap which got almost all of the urine out.
I feel so guilty and horrible that I didn’t bladder scan him earlier and nip this in the bud… I thought all was well bc he was putting out but his bladder could have literally ruptured :/ has this happened to anyone else before?? How common is something like this?? The other nurses didn’t seem to know what to do either :(