COPD

Tier:RN Topic: COPD Lesson Slug: `copd-rn` Category: Respiratory Body System: Respiratory Subcategory: Obstructive Lung Disease Jurisdictions: Canada and United States Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is one of the conditions you will meet most often as a registered nurse, and it is one where clinical reasoning matters far more than memorization. COPD sits on a spectrum from stable outpatient management to life-threatening respiratory failure, and the same patient can slide across that spectrum in hours. Your job as the RN is to interpret what assessment findings mean, decide how urgently to act, choose what to do first, know what you can safely hand to a practical nurse or unregulated care provider, and recognize the moment when oxygen alone is no longer enough. This lesson builds understanding from normal gas exchange upward, so every finding and intervention makes sense as a consequence of the physiology. When you understand why a patient with chronic carbon dioxide retention can look comfortable at a saturation that would alarm you in a healthy adult, and why pushing that saturation too high can harm them, you...