Question

You are performing an abdominal assessment on a postoperative patient. You are auscultating the bowel sounds in 4 quadrants and are having difficulty hearing them. The patient becomes restless and wants to know what is taking so long. What is your best response to this patient?

"I'm sorry but this may take me up to 30 minutes to hear all of the bowel sounds."

"I'm having difficulty hearing your bowel sounds, but it won’t take longer than 5 minutes."

"I'm trying to hear your food digest, but I’ll need to notify the doctor because they are too slow."

"I may need to listen for up to 5 minutes in each quadrant, and will notify the doctor if I'm unable to hear the bowel sounds."

Answer 1

Ans) Option: "I may need to listen for up to 5 minutes in each quadrant, and will notify the doctor if I'm unable to hear the bowel sounds."

Explaination:

- The first item to listen for is the presence of bowel sounds. - -- To chart an assessment finding of no bowel sounds, you need to listen over the quadrant for at least five minutes.

- Point to note is auscultation should be done before palpation and percussion to avoid influencing bowel sounds.

- It is necessary to listen to all 4 quadrants--5 minutes per each quadrant.

- As it is expected that a lot of post-op patients will have rare to hypoactive bowel sounds post-op. It's something called anesthiesa.

- It is also necessary to notify doctor if unable to hear the bowel sounds as absence of bowel sounds post operativerly over long duration is actually abnormal and is usually a sign that the intestines are inactive or underactive -- a condition that needs to be seen by a doctor, because it could be a medical emergency.