If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost...go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there. Bernice Johnson Reagon.

15 January 2013

Random thoughts



From a friend on Facebook…

The ‘new’ pain scale- “How bad does it hurt on a scale of 1 to 10, with ‘1’ being nothing and with ‘10’ being a ‘Scotty McCreery BoJangle’s commercial’?”

Question to my EMS brethren…

Actually, two-

First, how do you make a tourniquet if you do not have a commercial unit (CAT, for example)? What do you need?

Second, you have a patient with an obvious femur fracture. As you get out the traction splint you notice that the ankle hitch is missing. How do you make one and what do you need?

To warm IV fluids or not…

It’s winter time and even here in the south it gets cold. So who uses warm(ed) IV fluids? How do you warm them up? Is there an advantage to warming them?

Israeli Bandage or Olaes Bandage

Or is it OLAES? So, who has done a comparison?

3 comments:

Ambulance Driver said...

Triangular bandages folded as cravats.

Combined with a carabiner and a D-ring, they make an excellent tourniquet.

They also make a decent ankle hitch.

BadgerMedic said...

Just up the road from you, on the very cold shifts, I'll put an NS bag on the dash over the defroster; but I will not routinely use it - if I have an exposure case, I can turn the defroster on before I leave the cab... and then decide to use it or not after assessing the patient. I have only used the warmed fluids once on an exposed elderly patient who's core temperature was quite south from where it should have been...

BH said...

I use fluids from our warmer year-round.

The advantage is not putting room-temp fluids into a 98-degree patient. In the winter our apparatus bays are maintained at between 50 and 60 degrees, so this is even more cogent.