The Right Ventricle: Your First Big Fight
The Right Ventricle: Your First Big Fight You had a great first date. Things are progressing nicely, but then gosh dang COVID-19 hit and made life hard for everyone. Your new girlfriend is feeling the pressure. She’s working more hours than usual at Five Guys, there is a national shortage of ground beef which further […]
The Right Ventricle: Getting to Know Her
(Disclaimer: the following series is meant to be a light-hearted, silly way to learn about the right ventricle while poking fun at the awkwardness of dating. There will be goofy generalizations made about men AND women; none of them are meant to be offensive. Please laugh at my jokes. And learn, but mostly just laugh.) […]
Complacency is a Death Sentence
by Chelsea Epling, BSN, RN, MCCN, EMT-P Scenarios You’re in the ICU, on shift 4 of 4, you’re tired, your patient assignment has been less than ideal this week. Alcohol withdrawals, overdoses, getting kicked at, screamed at and occasionally spit on because the patient doesn’t like being attached to every cord and IV line you’re […]
Food Matters
What we eat matters. ???? Food is not good or bad. We have assigned these labels for pretty much every food. Cookies = bad. Broccoli = good. I want you to challenge this food rule. If you only ate cookies for a week it would certainly impact your health and how you feel. Likewise, […]
It’s Shockingly Simple | Part 1
Many times as healthcare professionals, we get wrapped up in the complicated concepts of emergency medicine and critical care. It’s important to frequently train on the fundamentals and stay up to date on the latest evidence-based practice, or else you could find yourself on a seemingly simple patient assignment and you’ve forgotten how to […]
How To Make Zombies: Part III
Airways are Sexy I was at an airway lecture as a baby medic and the instructor said “Airways are sexy. It’s the sexiest, most badass thing we get to do.” Sounds goofy, but he was right: airways are sexy. So, we’ve talked about cardiac arrest physiology, ITDs, Heads-up CPR, and more. All that stuff […]
How To Make Zombies: Part II
The Fun Stuff In Part 1, we looked at what happens to the body during a zombie apocalypse. Whoops, sorry, cardiac arrest. Impedance Threshold Devices and Heads-Up CPR were mentioned as being very effective in CPR, and it’s time to get to the fun stuff. I’m going to try really hard to not bore you […]
How To Make Zombies: Part I
Advances in Cardiac Arrest Care The most critical call we have as EMS providers is the one with the worst outcomes. Cardiac arrest care has been much the same for quite a while, because it’s hard to measure what works in those cases, and care guidelines lag years behind new evidence. For instance, “Heads-up CPR” […]
Arterial Lines 101
Arterial lines, commonly referred to as “A-lines,” are a type of catheter that is inserted into a patient’s artery for more accurate and precise blood pressure monitoring. The arterial line is connected to a transducer that will transmit a pressure waveform and its corresponding values to a monitoring system. While these invasive lines may be […]
IV Flow Rate Restrictions with Commonly Used Equipment
The relationship between IV catheter gauge and flow rate seems to be widely understood, but there could be standard practices in your fluid administration that are making your sweet 16 gauge in the AC perform more like a 20 in the hand. The limitation isn’t with the catheter itself, but rather the different equipment […]