The patient is unstable; so the nurse is using an electronic blood pressure device to measure blood pressures every 15 minutes. What should the nurse do to verify the accuracy of the electronic blood pressure measurements?
a. Check when the device was last cali-brated.
b. Know that the device adheres to current medical industry standards.
c. Take a manual blood pressure within sev-eral minutes of the electronic reading.
d. Verify that the systolic pressure is within 20% of patient baseline.
C
If the blood pressure readings from the electronic blood pressure measurement device are close to the patient's blood pressure on auscultation using a sphygmomanometer, the nurse assumes that the electronic device is accurate. Knowing when the device was calibrated does not guarantee its current accuracy. Medical industry standards do not exist for electronic blood pressure devices. A systolic measurement accurate within 20% of the patient's baseline is grossly inaccurate, and using such a measurement can potentially lead to catastrophic results.
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