EMT Recommended Pen?

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JesterEMS

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Hello,

I was wondering what pens you would recommend for clinical rotations.
I plan on writing simple OPQRST and SAMPLE history on the posterior portion of my palm.
Since there are germs that I will be exposed to, I was thinking my pen would collect some of it.
What kinds of pens do you suggest I get that are antibacterial or antimicrobial coated.

One thing I've noticed about pens it that ball pens work best when writing on latex gloves.

Cheers!
 
What is the posterior palm?

Also, cavicide wipes. And don't write a history on your gloves.
 
the top of the hand, I guess.
Studying some anatomy so please correct me if I am wrong..

If SAMPLE doesn't contain any names or any identifying information we still shouldn't write it?
 
JesterEMS said:
the top of the hand, I guess.
Studying some anatomy so please correct me if I am wrong..

If SAMPLE doesn't contain any names or any identifying information we still shouldn't write it?
Click to expand...

The palm would be the anterior surface of than hand in normal anatomical position.

Nothing to do with privacy, it's just kind of an icky habit. And what happens when the glove becomes contaminated?
 
Thank you, Tigger for clarifying :)

Well when writing a PCR, we can transfer the history to the report.
Just for quick note taking, I was thinking if this was a good thing.

Of course, gloves will become contaminated but we dispose of them after the report has been written.
I was thinking to use this idea because if I were to use a notepad, wouldn't the notepad collect germs over time?
What would be the best way to effectively take quick notes?
 
I go through gloves like they're free. ;) I also don't write anything on my gloves because most of the time, they'll be in a trash container within a few minutes and therefore anything that I wrote on them will be gone. What do I do to take notes? In each of the rooms in my ER, there's a white board. I use that. If I don't have that available, I get a paper towel from the dispenser and write on that. If that's not available and I have it immediately available, I'll put a 2" strip of tape on my thigh and go with that. Most of the time that's not available so I just depend upon a good memory to catch the highlights.

When I'm taking notes during a call, I often just write a time and a single word to remind me what I was doing at that time. Then later I reconstruct the call from memory and my simple notes. I'm not saying you should do this, I'm just saying what I do but then again I have a kind of mental scaffold from which to hang all the details from.
 
I was always a 2" waterproof tape on my rectus femorus at the patellar insertion type of guy. ;)
 
Oh, and as far as pens go, I pretty much used the cheapest BIC click pen I could buy... if my company didn't provide them for me. Of course we bought something like 5,000 of them at a time so...
 
Pens: Whatever I pick up for free at insurance offices, U-Haul or one of my favorite Breweries.

Notes: Try typing your PCR with your gloves on and see how well that goes over. Gloves go in the trash... I use a strip of monitor printer paper if the hx is too complex to remember. I also write notes on the back of my 12L. In clinicals, I had a cheap pocket notebook.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Mmmm,
So it seems like 2" tape is what is used for note taking.
If I broke this strategy out in my basic class for simulation would this be appropriate?

What other note taking skills are out there now???
As far as pens @Akulahawk, you would use them 1 time use?
 
gotshirtz001 said:
Pens: Whatever I pick up for free at insurance offices, U-Haul or one of my favorite Breweries.

Notes: Try typing your PCR with your gloves on and see how well that goes over. Gloves go in the trash... I use a strip of monitor printer paper if the hx is too complex to remember. In clinicals, I had a cheap pocket notebook.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I am barely starting EMT-B this late August. I don't think I will have any computer access so I'm assuming everything is manually written somewhere.
 
There is no pen except the Pilot G2 Gel Ballpoint Retractable.

All other pens are heresy.

0.35 or 0.5 for charts
0.7 or 1.0 if you are writing on tape on your leg or the IV pump
Black Ink

Death to the nonbeliever!
 
My own personal pens are stainless steel Zebra G-301 pens, preferably Gel, black ink. I have used the Pilot G2 pens referenced above and they are awesome. I very much concur about the point size for stated purposes.
 
@Akulahawk @Summit

To be honest, I love G2 blue ink gel pens.
I've been using them for a while.
They are my go to.
The only thing is that they are expensive and I wouldn't recommend them as disposable.
 
I've been trying to break myself of the habit of writing on my gloves, for several reasons. Although initially it seems easier to just pull out your pen and jot down on your hand, (which is the same reason I got into that habit as a rookie), I've since found a simple pocket notebook is vastly superior.

Firstly although Large gloves fit me best, they aren't a quite perfect fit, there's just enough extra slack in the material that the tip of the pen catches on and pulls at the glove itself often enough to demand I have to take extra care to produce a legible letter (notice that's each individual letter) vs a piece of paper I can just write on like normal. If larges aren't available for whichever reason, I find XL's the next most useful size for me to actually work and perform patient care tasks in, but those produce enough extra material that catches the pen that writing on them is virtually impossible. I can squeeze into a pair of mediums of no L/XL's are available, and while those are easiest to write on, they're so tight on my hands that I feel constrained and break them far more easy. So it's easier just to put on the proper sized gloves to do effective patient care and pull out the paper to write on.

If my gloves break, get blood, or other icky on them, I can pull them off and replace without worrying about losing all my notes.

Even for relatively clean patients, there's a definitive "ickyness" to holding onto the gloves used. Whether you keep the same pair of gloves on throughout the entire call or carefully pull off your notes and keep them with you until you transfer the info onto the PCR, they're still left bunched up on the bench seat of in your pocket or on the counter at the hospital....if you keep doing that with "clean" gloves you'll find yourself doing that with the "nasty" gloves and no one else that sees them knows which one they are and wont appreciate you repeatedly placing dirty gloves on their counter everytime you drop off a patient at their ER....

Plus by using simple paper notebooks, you completely avoid the original question of which pen works best on nitrile, or is anti-microbial etc, pretty much every pen will work fine with standard pocket sized notepads.
 
The best pen is a free pen. Or the one you haven't lost yet. You will be exposed to germs regardless, so no, don't throw them away after one use.
 
StCEMT said:
The best pen is a free pen. Or the one you haven't lost yet. You will be exposed to germs regardless, so no, don't throw them away after one use.
Click to expand...
So after use of a pen, clean it with a CaviWipe?
 
StCEMT said:
I don't. I just use an alcohol prep if/when I do. Handwashing is what I am picky about.
Click to expand...
Why would you be picky about handwashing and not about proper disinfectant procedures for equipment?

Alcohol is not sporocidal, doesn't penetrate protein rich material, and it evaporates quickly making it a poor choice for equipment, especially if just using a prep pad as opposed to a drenched cloth or immersion.

How many of us do disinfect our pens... how about our stethoscopes... how about our smart phones?
 
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