The trauma triad of death is made up of hypothermia, coagulopathy, and acidosis. And when it comes to hemorrhagic shock that will occur unless we intervene as quickly as possible. If possible, we want to interrupt the development of the triad be addressing the individual parts as quickly as possible. Hypothermia occurs in cases of [...]
Reminder, the scenario and questions that were asked of a group of paramedic students: You are called to the home of a 24-year-old female who is 36 weeks pregnant and in labor. You are met at the door and advised that she has had no prenatal care. You are also told that the patient has been [...]
Part 2 of 3 Paramedic Discussion: Reminder, the scenario and questions that were asked of a group of paramedic students: You are called to the home of a 24-year-old female who is 36 weeks pregnant and in labor. You are met at the door and advised that she has had no prenatal care. You are also [...]
Recently, I was working with a group of paramedic students, and they were given the following discussion question: You are called to the home of a 24-year-old female who is 36 weeks pregnant and in labor. You are met at the door and advised that she has had no prenatal care. You are also told that [...]
Crew Resource Management (CRM) is a team-oriented approach for the effective use of personnel to promote the teamwork, communication, and problem-solving to patient safety. CRM originated in the commercial airline industry because there were numerous errors because of breaks in communication amongst the crew members in the 1980’s and has since been expanded into dynamic, high-stress [...]
Just Culture has gained significant attention in the healthcare industry, but when I talk about it in our EMT and paramedic course it seems that the concept has a way to go. Too many of our peers do not feel comfortable making a mistake and owning it without punishment up to and including suspension or [...]
I can never remember the term when I need it, so I thought I would write a blog about the condition to try and correct that. Dextrocardia occurs when the heart is in the right side of the chest and the apex points to the right instead of the left. This condition was discovered in the [...]
The autonomic nervous system, which is subdivided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, plays a critical role in how the body responds to the stressors we encounter. Our body uses a negative feedback loop to respond to those stressors. As our body encounters a stressor, the sympathetic nervous system releases hormones into the bloodstream. Epinephrine, [...]
As an industry we love to throw out numbers, the most repetitive being 500 mL. We hear that number several times over the course of our initial training courses. And I do not know about the other DistanceCME (DCME) faculty, but I feel like I mention 500 mL at least once a week, and usually more. [...]
In an interesting turn of events the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Jan. 13, late Friday afternoon, that it is looking into a link between the COVID-19 vaccination and ischemic strokes in the older adult population, those over the age of 65. This report comes as [...]
