Hello, this is how to teach your patient how to use the Incentives Barometer. So the first step to teaching this is to make sure that you understand how to use this and what it is used for. So this device is used to help encourage patients to take slow, deep breaths. to actually expand their lungs as much as possible, to prevent alveolar collapse, which is called atlactesis, and also to prevent pneumonia. You'll often see these used in patients after surgery or patients with lung disease like COPD or pneumonia.
So my first step when I'm teaching my patient is to come in the room, verify that I have the correct patient. This is DeAndre Williams, Datorberg 1212-19XX. He verifies that that is correct. I start off by assessing his ability to learn.
Is he awake and alert and appropriate? Is he not in any respiratory distress? He is calm. Breathing is okay right now, so he's ready to learn. Then I'm going to explain to him why he's going to use this device.
So when I explain it to my patient, I'm not going to use words like alveoli and epileptosis. I'm going to say this is to exercise your lungs and to prevent pneumonia. So when I'm explaining to the patient how to use this, I tell the patient take a normal breath out, breathe out, then put your lips around the mouthpiece and make a tight seal. Make sure the tongue is not in the way.
And then breathe in slowly and deeply, as deep as you can. And then hold your breath for two to three seconds and then breathe out normally. As the patient breathes in, this piston right here will move up and it will show us the volume of how much air that he breathed in.
At the same time, the success monitor over here will move up and where we want it to be is right in the middle. I'm going to turn this around. Right in the middle where it says better. If the patient breathes in a really fast breath, This little indicator here will come to the hot top, hit the top and just go back down. Because we want a slow deep breath, not a fast deep breath.
And patients can do this themselves. We want them to sit up while they're doing it, as high as they can. Sitting up in a chair is preferable, but if they can't be up in the chair, sitting in a high bowler is certainly appropriate. So this is actually my incentive spirometer and so I'm going to show you how it is used so that you can see this. So I'm going to breathe out a normal breath and then I'm going to breathe in.
I'm going to hold my breath for two to three seconds and then I'm going to breathe out. I'm going to show again and look over here. You saw the piston went up to about 1500 and I want you to look over here and see if this is right in the middle where it should be.
So breathe out, breathe in, hold, breathe out again. So there's two different things to look at as your patient is doing this. The piston over here for the volume, how much did the patient breathe in.
And here to look was the breath, a nice slow deep breath. After my patient has done this a few times, the patient should try to cough. So that helps to loosen any secretions and to get them out.
Usually patients are instructed to use this 10 times an hour. Many patients, when they're in the hospital, if they're awake, it's a little boring to be in the hospital. Sometimes we say we'll do it two or three times with every commercial break from the program that you're watching.
A lot of times patients can't do this 10 times all at one time, but they can do it two or three times every 15 minutes. That will equal their 10 times every hour. And that's all for using the incentives parameter and teaching it to your patient.