Empowering nurses to activate the rapid response team.

All clinical nurses need to be prepared to recognize deterioration in a patient's clinical status and activate the rapid response team when appropriate. This article explores the clinical nurse's role in recognizing and responding to deterioration in a patient's condition with a focus on hospital-based nurses practicing on a medical-surgical unit.

Patient with intracranial subarachnoid hemorrhage requiring an endovascular coiling procedure.

A 53-year-old man with a sudden onset of visual disturbances and a severe headache is transported to the emergency department, triaged as emergent, and seen immediately. His care is described on the basis of embolization and coiling in interventional radiology. Prioritization and nursing management postprocedure are discussed, and the importance of astute nursing interventions in the emergency department is presented.