Top Tricks for Little Pricks

songsorstories's avatarSongs or Stories

One of the things we hope to share on here are those practical tips people use in day to day practice. There was an obvious spot to start.

This is a post about frustration. It’s a post about humility. It’s a post about annoyance and triumph that shouldn’t be treated as a victory.

It’s about cannulation.

Getting a cannula in the patient can be the most mundane, most satisfying or most frustrating part of a day at work for a kids’ anaesthetist. Cannulation is not just useful clinically. It has an excellent habit of keeping any practitioner from getting too far ahead of themselves, just when they are feeling like the supreme clinician.

Anyone who has worked with anyone else has also seen or heard lots of different tips and tricks that individuals have built into their practice over the years. Of course, if there was a single thing that…

View original post 1,197 more words

Chat about Chests – On Holes and Whether Plastic is Fantastic

careflightcollective's avatarThe Collective

Dr Andrew Weatherall with an introduction to a new type of thing (well, for this site anyway). 

*Ahem* [clears throat].

Well, we finally thought we should try chatting. After much delay we finally sat down and tried recording a chat with a microphone. And then after a much longer delay I have finally spent some time learning what to do with all that noise. All that slightly-too-quick-talking noise.

This effort features me chatting with Dr Alan Garner about those times you need to decompress the pleural space. It seems to be an area where a lot of people have passionate ideas about how and when to intervene. This makes it ideal for a chat, although maybe harder to be definitive about what to do. While Alan makes the argument that many of the disadvantages of tube thoracostomy first solved by the open technique have other solutions apparent in modern practice. However, all…

View original post 652 more words

Load-Play-Go and “6 minutes approach” in Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest . Is this just fool?

medest118's avatarMEDEST

PROTOCOLLO ELS da plastificare_engI’m really surprised of the great debate that the previous post (Load-Play-Go in Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest. The “6 minutes approach”) arouse around the “6 minutes approach”, and all the comments on the “load-play and go” way to manage the OHCA patients potentially candidate to Externa Life Support.

Most of the comments affirmed that 6 minutes to run a code is an utopia, and that stay and play is the right and only way to manage out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA).

“This is silly. 6 minutes to work a code into the back of your ambulance?….”, “I just wish I could convince more people that out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a “stay and play” and not a “half ass cpr that provides nothing to the patient and rush to the hospital” kind of call……”, “There’s next to nothing that will be done in the hospital that you can’t…

View original post 619 more words

Better Pink or Better Blue? Dealing with Cardiac Kids

songsorstories's avatarSongs or Stories

OK, here we go. This is the first in a 2 part series on a general approach to kids with cardiac disease. This post, by Dr Andrew Weatherall, is on key points of assessment. The second post in the series will be an attempt to provide simple goals of anaesthesia when looking after these kids. Dr Andrew Weatherall is a paediatric anaesthetist and prehospital doctor, working mostly at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. He spends some time doing cardiac anaesthesia, including a couple of aid trips. This post also had a check by Dr Justin Skowno, also a cardiac anaesthetist at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. 

Better Pink or Better Blue? The Kid with Congenital Heart Disease

We all have nightmares. They might have been monsters once. They might relate to Elvis Presley’s diet. For anaesthetists, it can be any number of clinical scenarios. Or sometimes the quality of the next cup of coffee.

View original post 1,507 more words