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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | JaNuaRy 2015
'I Can't Pee'
a stream of good advice if you require patients to void before discharge.
O
ne of the
challenges
of working
in an outpatient sur-
gicenter is ensuring
that patients are well
enough to go home.
Included in the
checklist for dis-
charge is the ability
to urinate. While some facilities insist the patient pass urine before dis-
charge, others are more liberal in the plumbing department.
Nonetheless, I have learned much in my career about the many nursing
tricks of the trade to ensure voluminous urine flow.
• Reassurance. Simply giving the patient some reassurance and let-
ting him calm down often enhances urinary output. Most of us can't
urinate under duress. To illustrate this, I would ask male readers to
recall their experiences at the football stadium men's room urinal
when throngs of desperate distended fans are breathing down your
neck. I bet you'd be happy if your flow was a trickle!
Merely trying to keep the patient's mind off of the act of urination
may do wonders to increase urinary throughput. Trouble is, if the
patient has a prostate the size of a melon, their bladder is ready to
plotz, and they are already taking industrial-strength Xanax, it is diffi-
cult to get them to relax.
• Running water. The old tried and true "run the tap water" seems to
be most nurses' top choice to relax the bladder sphincter. One simply
C U T T I N G R E M A R K S
John D. Kelly IV, MD
z GOOD TO THE LAST DROP Patients sometimes
need help increasing their urinary throughput.
