Attention! New contender for most pathetic ER visit chief complaint
25 y/o M CC:
“I inhaled some water in the shower this morning and now I’m coughing”.
Is it just me or does bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev look like Noel Redding from the Are You Experienced album from the Jimi Hendrix Experience?
Simple rule for all you triage nurses:
Don’t let people with abdominal pain sit for 45 min in the waiting room with a blood pressure of 76 systolic and a heart rate of 120. It’s bad form.
Thanks.
If you ask me, the most important thing you need to be able to do when working in the ER as a doctor or a nurse (and to only a slightly lesser extent, as a tech or a respiratory therapist), is to be able to recognize when someone is in cardiac arrest.
Sounds pretty basic, right? Then how can some people who should know better (ie BLS/ACLS trained) not realise that a pt who becomes unresponsive is in fact pulseless and apnoeic!
Come on people, feel for a pulse and check for respirations!
