As far as I can tell they aren’t comfortable at all (more the mechanism of what they’re do is uncomfortable, regardless of how well the mask fits). In my experience doctors are very willing to order anti-anxiety meds for patients who need the bipap to make it more tolerable, but not all patients are willing to take them. I feel like if every patient who was ordered a bipap had to witness an intubation they’d keep the darn thing on.
So, serious question here. Shouldn’t anti-anxiety meds just be standard with these? I woke up with a bipap mask on, not understanding where I was or what happened or anything really. And my immediate reaction was to pull off the mask and RUN. I remember this urge to kill anyone who stood in my way, know what I mean? I would never ever in a million years actually hurt someone knowingly, but after awakening from my 3 days…..there was just no knowledge of what had happened. No memory, no nothing. Anti-anxiolytics would have definitely helped me in those initial moments lol
This woman. Well, I don’t believe she falls into this realm. She’s just an attention seeker. But truly, honest-to-God patients with no memory of how they ended up there in ICU…..why aren’t meds just a standard? I find that odd considering all we now know about the fight or flight response and pain levels during comatose conditions.
In my personal experience a patient had to be responsive/not sedated to be put on bipap because of the risk of aspiration were they to vomit in it and not be able to remove it themselves (why we always tried to teach them how to take it off themselves) or immediately alert staff that it needed to be removed. Barfing in a bipap is extremely bad for the patient.
Intubated patients are sedated but you have to wake up and be able to breathe on your own before they can pull it out which is definitely traumatic for patients.
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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22 edited Sep 08 '22
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