Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Candy Caldwell on October 6, 2007 at 5:02pm

Here was my wild idea that worked...Working in the Chicago area you get use to the cold. We had an entrapment that was going to take a while to get free, she was pregnant and needed fluids...warm fluids. How do you do this when its 40 below. I put the IV inside my coat next to my body, the tubing I coiled and I kept breaking the warm packs and kept one below the coil and one above the coil. It worked great!!! Hope you are never this cold or need to do this!!! I think that was about the coldest I have ever been.

Stay safe!!!

Permalink Reply by Katie Moon on November 14, 2007 at 9:13am

I think all of us at one time or another had a patient that was totally limp (think OD or cardiac arrest) whose arms kept flopping off the stretcher.
We had a very tall man, who arrested while having sex in a "No-Tell Motel".
We worked the code, trying to get out the door, with his long arms getting in the way. I grabbed a Kling to secure his arms together. When we got to the hospital, the doc asked if I always did that with the kling. I replied "If it's getting in the way". On closer look, I discovered what the doc had seen. I'd also secured his penis...

Permalink Reply by Annette on May 3, 2008 at 11:27am

High tech as it may seem, when it dips below freezing we throw a couple of 1000cc bags of NS on the dash and crank the defrost! I did have an instance last year during a prolonged extrication when the fluid froze in the tube (first time that's ever happened to me)......might have to put those little warm packs on my list!

Permalink Reply by Annette on May 3, 2008 at 11:39am

We had a bariatric patient who had fallen down a flight of 20 stairs, managed to crawl back up them....of course.....and call 911. No neck, so we rolled up a towel and wrapped it around the cervical area, placed a LBB underneath him, he was hanging off the top and bottom, two towel rolls beside the head after securing the torso, we basically mummied him with two inch silk tape. The Fire Dept has a HUGE tarp with handles, we placed the LBB on that, leaving enough to fold it over the feet and slid him down the stairs, which were maybe....MAYBE 4ft wide and the angle was tremendous, we looped rope through the handles at the foot of the tarp and the people at the head held them as we slid him down, keeping him from sliding off the board. We have unfortunatley learned alot of new tricks for bariatric patient care. I've never seen so many people over 500lbs in my entire career as I have in the last 5 years. We even outfitted one of our trucks with ramps and a wench. The cot has a 1500lb weight limit when its in the lowered position.

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on October 25, 2010 at 4:43pm

We deal with a lot of trach patients. I've found that a nebulizer bowl fits the trach adapter in place of the hospital tubing. If you need humidity just add a little sterile H20 and you're good to go.