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!
Happy new year everyone. Several musings on working overnight on New Year’s Eve.
First if you’re going to try to break up a fight between two people, try to avoid sticking your finger into one of the combatant’s mouths. Yes your finger will probably get bitten off.
Second, if you get stabbed 10 times it’s probably better to call the ambulance than to have your friend drive you in.
Third, if you’re diagnosed with the flu you can expect to have fever for 4-7 days. Tamiflu will not get rid of your fever three hours after taking it. There is no need to return to the emergency room for such things.
Fourth, always think twice about when you leave your 14-year-old off at a party with supposedly “good people”. He’s liable to end up intoxicated facedown on the roadside somewhere.
Some people can’t catch a break. They’re in and out of the hospital four times in the last two months with fevers and recurring sepsis that nobody can find the cause of. They get better each time on a cocktail of antibiotics.
After finally seeming to be better for several weeks they return again. This time with massive C diff colitis and a blood pressure 60.
