 Welcome to Nursing School Explained and this video in the Care Plan Help Series where we address lab values and nursing considerations and apply them to a particular patient care scenario to help you analyze your patient on your care plan and prove to your professor that you understand that you're able to critically think about the patient that you encounter in clinical. So today we're going to be looking at the lab value of CO2 and CO2 is a gas that we expel after breathing so that's a very important consideration so but CO2 also applies to blood gases and the acid base balances and really CO2 is also an indicator of the bicarbonate level or HCO3 that we otherwise can only assess in ABGs but it's a general guideline so because we know that CO2 relates to the patient's respiratory status we should always assess their respiratory rate, their depth, their effort as well as their O2SAT because that all relates back to their CO2 level. We also want to measure their eyes and nose because eyes and nose hydration status has to do with the kidney function and kidneys regulate the acid base balance between the hydrogen ions and the bicarbonate that's being exquited so we need to consider that. Certainly we need to consider kidney function because they act as that buffering agent that expels or absorbs more of the hydrogen ion or the bicarbonate and then if available we can also check the patient's arterial blood gases to see if there's an acidotic or alkalotic state that will then give us a better idea about the patient's CO2 level and what is going on specifically in terms of their blood gases. Now if we look at this particular example here that you might encounter in clinical so 45 year old female status post-cholestestectomy, past medical history, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and Jesus smoker so now if there was any imbalance in the CO2 so maybe now this patient is anxious because she has a lot of pain and she's hyperventilating that certainly could throw that CO2 off balance and so then we would want to calm her down maybe give her a little bit of anti anxiety medication those kind of things but if the patient was for example on pain medication maybe on a PCA pump as can be after surgery maybe the patient is now hypoventilating and so the appropriate interventions would be encouraging that incentives parameter maybe giving her a little bit of O2 to boost her and then see what her respiratory rate is and assess the effect that narcotics might be having on her respiratory system if we are looking at the eyes and nose as related as to kidney function we certainly would want to check what kind of IV fluids is she getting if any and what is her hydration status in general is she taking in any oral fluids is she hydrated are her kidneys functioning properly so to make sure that she is in a acid in a good acid base balance and like I said before CO2 is kind of like a general value that you can assess for on a basic blood count but more in-depth analysis would be helpful with an arterial blood gas although that's not always indicated it just depends on how the patient is doing how is their breathing and how does it relate to their blood gases is it even applicable to check those so thanks so much for watching this video on lab test considerations lab test and nursing considerations also check out the other videos where I go into different kind of lab tests and analyze that as it pertains to your care plan and the patient scenario that you are dealing with in clinical thanks for watching see you soon