Today on nurse minder we are talking all about poop! Yes I said it,
poop! We're gonna look at the hemoccult blood test book that we are using to test
her fecal occult blood. we're gonna look at
why we're doing it, what do our patients need to know, and what do we need to know to
collect the best sample to improve the accuracy of this testing. And we're gonna
do that all right after this. Welcome back my name is Tammy and this is nurse
minder and on this channel we do everything nursing; So if you're new here
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All right it's one of the first things we need to know is what the fecal occult
blood test is and is not. It is a screening tool, it is not diagnostic; and
that's an important detail to remember. This is simply letting us know if
there's blood in the stool that we cannot see with our eyes; that's why it's
called occult - it's hidden. This blood might be coming from a peptic ulcer, GI
inflammation, maybe they had a nosebleed and it's kind of made its way through - we
can't see those pieces and so this is simply just gonna tell us - is there blood
present in the stool or not. Now if we're using the old hemoccult II testing strips, there's some very specific information that our patients
need to know, and we need to gather, to improve the accuracy. So let's take a
look at the things that can cause false positives, false negatives, and what our
patients need to know. A false positive result can occur if our patients consume
red meat, are taking medications such as aspirin, NSAIDs, corticosteroids,
anticoagulants, and chemotherapy or consuming excess alcohol. When it comes
to a false negative we're looking for vitamin C, did I mention vitamin C? Yes I
did! Vitamin C We want to avoid an excess of 250 milligrams a
day, so we're looking to see how much is in our supplements, if they're taking
fruit juices, and iron supplements. So what does this all mean
for our patient? Well essentially we have some timelines and some teaching that we
need to do. Seven days before beginning the test and to continue during the
collection of samples, we want our patients to avoid NSAIDs. Now they can
take acetaminophen, that's fine. Three days before the test and again
during the sample collection, what we want for our patient to do is to avoid
red meats and avoid excess vitamin C. In looking at our sample kit, we see that we
have three applicator sticks inside and one slide test card. When we open this up,
you'll see that the test card is actually a series of three testing kits.
I've gone ahead and already labeled the information that you'll put on your
patients card; you may be using a patient ID sticker, or if they go home they'll
need to label this with the relevant information. There's also three sample
collecting sticks inside. We're just going to keep one out for now and I'm
going to show you next how to collect the sample.
So I'm going to open up my first testing strip and you notice that there are two
areas labeled A and B. This is where we're going to put our stool sample.
Collecting a stool sample will require a dry clean container, and you want to
catch the stool before it contacts the toilet water. To demonstrate the stool
collection I've got some peanut butter here in a clean dry container. Taking the
end of your applicator tip, you will select a small amount of stool from one
side of the stool sample and you will put a thin smear in column number A. Of
course you should be wearing gloves and I forgot to put them on for
demonstration so please make sure you have your gloves on. We need to then take
a second sample from another area of the stool, so I'm going to go to the top end
here, and we're going to then smear this into column B. Collecting samples from
two different areas will increase the likelihood that we can identify if occult
blood is present. Once the sample is collected we're simply going to close
this, secure it under the tab and we want to leave this sit for 24 hours to air
dry. Completing the set of stool samples will require that we collect samples on
three different days. Now there are some important considerations for this as
well. If blood is visible in urine or stool such as when you have menstruation
or hemorrhoids, do not collect a sample on that day. We also need to
return the completed set within 10 days after collecting the first sample. That
is our lesson on poop. Until I see you next time, make it a great day
and be sure to subscribe to these videos that you're seeing popping up here so
that you can stay connected and be notified when the next video is released