Sometimes the care that providers offer is not strict technical skill and only for the primary "patient."
Its important provide emotional support to the patient and his/her family.
Don't Quit - CPR 96 Minutes = Still alive
- Thread starter catskills
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Sometimes the care that providers offer is not strict technical skill and only for the primary "patient."
Its important provide emotional support to the patient and his/her family.
abckidsmom
Dances with Patients
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Yeah, but not that the cost of working stiff, cold babies. When I was a basic, I worked one of those calls. We arrived to find a cop doing CPR on a 5 week old, stiff, cold baby. The medic I was working with scooped up the kid and transported. No IV access, asystole, stiff and cold. Well before IOs were so mainstream...he couldn't get it with the jamshidi needle.
Anyway, mom rode up front the whole way with me going, "He died, right? Why are they doing all this if he died? Is he going to live?"
Nope. He's not. Let me pop over to that "good medic" thread and say that a good medic will recognize dead when they see it, tactfully communicate that fact to the family, and provide support until other support can be mobilized. Yep, it sucks and it's hard, and it's probably outside the capability of many of the young medics I see out there, but it's part of the job.
Better to start the new reality when it starts than have an hour of hope and wondering, waiting to be squashed by the reality that already is.
jjesusfreak01
Forum Deputy Chief
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Theoretically, good compressions + good ventilations can keep someone going for quite a while and it might be worth working it for a while if you can reasonably believe that they were already braindead or had killed off their heart muscle. Sure, a patient down for ten minutes might be braindead, but they weren't necessarily in vfib that whole time.
I imagine that ETCO2 will probably stay good with good compressions and ventilations far after you have brain death or heart muscle death, so it probably isn't the best means to determine when not to call a code, but it could be a good indication of when TO call a code. Personally, i'm in favor of protocols that ensure that you have good ventilation, good cpr, and have run through the whole drug and shocking regimen. If that doesn't bring them back, then you're probably SOL.
I imagine that ETCO2 will probably stay good with good compressions and ventilations far after you have brain death or heart muscle death, so it probably isn't the best means to determine when not to call a code, but it could be a good indication of when TO call a code. Personally, i'm in favor of protocols that ensure that you have good ventilation, good cpr, and have run through the whole drug and shocking regimen. If that doesn't bring them back, then you're probably SOL.