Question

can a nurse give oxygen to a patient without the physican order? If yes, how much and under what circumstances?

Answer 1

Ans. I would say yes and no.

Oxygen is considered a drug is therefore requires an order from a physician / doctor . However there are times in nursing that require nursing judgement, and times where nurse don’t have time to get an order. Nurses must respond and treat hypoxia. Oxygen sat dropped to 70%, so I put on a simple face mask at 7.5L.” This is just an example, but I would say most MDs will be more upset if you call them asking for an order for oxygen while your patient is currently declining instead of preforming the correct interventions.

All this being said in general unless hypoxia is present oxygen should not be used, applying oxygen when no hypoxia is present may not be beneficial. This even applies to just 2L.

There is also patients with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to think about for this question. They really shouldn’t be getting much more than a few liters of oxygen, this is because patients with COPD have an hypoxic drive, so giving them lots of O2 will just kill their drive to breathe. However if they start declining nurses must treat hypoxia, even if that means cranking up the oxygen until a rapid response team arrives to probably intubate that patient.

For example, lets say we are in a ICU. The RN recognizes that the patient needs oxygen, and recognizes there are no contraindications no ICU doc is ever going to question why oxygen wasnt immediately given. It is just assumed. Yes technically an order should exist. But an ICU, people are sick, we can appropriately monitor the effects of oxygen, and titrate the oxygen.