4My Emergency

Archive for January, 2012

One of the primary responsibilities of an emergency nurse is to provide care to patients when they need it the most. Such circumstances often get classified as emergency situations. Nurses trained in emergency nursing are able to meet the health care needs of the patients who are at a very critical stage of their illness.

Most nurses deal with on-the-spot situations or urgent calls made to them, in order for them to attend to patients. At the stage of the nurse attending to the patient, the reason for the illness or injury is not determined. This is because the doctor wouldn’t have attended to the patient itself. Thus, the responsibility of the emergency nurse is to ensure she attends to the patient and provides him emergency healthcare treatment which can last until the time the doctor actually gets to deliver his treatment course.

It is extremely important for the nurse to know how to take care of the illness or the injury condition of the patient. At the time of treating the patient, the nurse would try to understand the reason for the injury and will treat the patient in accordance with the reasons of the illness or the injury. This does not mean that the nurse has to be fully aware of the medical implications of the treatment. Her responsibility is to ensure that the patient, who is in an emergency situation, survives until the time the doctor gets to treat him.

For example, a person who has been hit by a car when standing on the road, may need immediate assistance on blood replenishment and support for bones. The nurse attending to him would do the needful and on the other hand, will call her doctor to attend to him as soon as possible. Such cases are also known as Trauma cases, and are handled by these nurses.

To get into emergency nursing, you need to be a Registered Nurse in practice for at least 2 years. Once you have 2 years experience as a Registered Nurse, you can study for Additional Emergency Nursing Training courses, which last for about 6-8 months. On passing the examination for this course, nurses could check with the healthcare setting if they can work in emergency nursing.

Have you heard about emergency room notes? You may not have known of this note until you have searched and read this article. The notes coming from the emergency room are actually very important documents and those that handle them must be thanked for having the proper training on such important documentation.

The pre-med students who are looking forward to working in the ER may not even have a clear view on what goes on the emergency room note developments and procedures. The emergency room notes involve all the happening and procedures that are important to be documented by the medical practitioners attending to the needs of the patients rushed in the emergency room.

A scribe in the ER is the one who handles the documentation of the ER notes. Any person assigned to the job is to follow all the doctors’ procedures as well as organize them for the emergency records in the room to be handled faster. The scribes making the emergency room notes are almost the same or synonymous in the responsibility as to a secretary of a doctor. The necessary forms that need to be completed by the patients are handled as well as the exam procedure, present illness and its history and above all, the findings of the physicians in the step-by-step procedures done on every individual who steps into the emergency room for treatment. The scribes are like the shadows of the busy doctors in the ER since this place is always bustling with activities, they play an important role in getting the necessary information that they find essential.

The admission or discharge of a patient in the hospital from the ER is a part of the ER notes. The ones that provide some training for the scribe that will be handling the full documentation within the ER are the physicians’ assistants. Usually, pre-med students get into these kinds of jobs and provide them with the invaluable experience they need. The doctor’s every move needs to be observed and follow the health provider from patient to results of x-rays and other laboratories. Diagnosis, suturing and broken bone splinting are among the things seen in the emergency room and must be reflected in the emergency room notes of the scribe.

The people who work in completing these ER notes can experience a lot of hard work even when they have the minimal training on the exact procedure. The challenge in the work is the development of the accurate patient experiences without any errors. Terminology is another issue that needs to be developed for the medical record needs in the job of the ER scribe.

These ER notes play very important roles in the medical records that may be needed for criminal, accidental and medical procedures for the patients’ needs of documents.

Decreased level of consciousness or “DLOC” is one of the most common calls to EMS. DLOC can be caused by many things and for different reasons. What often is called “unresponsive” is actually DLOC. Victims with a decreased level of consciousness are not entirely unresponsive, but often their level of consciousness is decreased to the point that it appears so to the untrained eye. Often CPR has been started on victims with DLOC. This is not the appropriate course of action. If a person is breathing, that means that they have a working heart. This is true even if their level of consciousness is decreased. If the heart is working then CPR is contraindicated.

Often patients with a decreased level of consciousness are in serious trouble. They may respond inappropriately to verbal commands or may only respond to physical stimuli. Many times bystanders have no idea what is wrong, and at other times a bit of medical history can provide some valuable clues and shed some light on the situation. Care for the victim with a decreased level of consciousness includes management of the airway and breathing. Generally, the recovery position (on their side) is the best position for the person as long there is no indication of head, neck, or back injury. However, if the victim is in a comfortable position on something like a sofa chair or in any position where there is no risk of them falling, then that would be acceptable. As long as the victim is breathing they are alive, and CPR must not be performed on someone who is breathing.

Quite often the problem can be related to blood sugar levels, electrolyte imbalance or other type of blood chemistry disorder. It may also be a stroke, medication over dose or serious infection. Sometimes it can be difficult for EMS providers to determine what exactly is wrong, and in many cases the answer may only be proved after extensive hospital assessment. In any case, decreased level of consciousness is a true medical emergency and should prompt bystanders to call 911 or the local emergency number in addition to providing appropriate basic life support care.