Abbott Preparation Week 32 (Medic Cycle)

This week has been another week of cramming as much knowledge of medicine as I can into my brain, and working part time on top of that.

Yet again, I find myself embroiled in the rigors of EMT school, making major progress along the accelerated course that I am taking. I’ve taken my first test (which I passed with a B+, not my best work), and am already studying for test number two. I’ve also signed off on a not insignificant number of skills already including Epipen administration, intranasal medicine application (for Narcan, more specifically) and the aforementioned cervical stabilization of a seated patient skill (which is referring to the usage of the KED vest that I talked about last post). Additionally, we’ve been continuing taking vital signs, adding in the rest of the vital signs to include: pulse, blood pressure, skin signs, capillary refill, breathing rate, lung sounds and eye signs. We learned about pulse and blood pressure last week, which are pretty self explanatory, and breathing rate and lung sounds are also cut and dry, but some of these others aren’t quite as easy to discern so I’ll talk about them briefly. First, when looking at a patient’s skin signs, you are looking for a few things: color, temperature and moisture. Pale, cool and clammy or diaphoretic skin usually indicates shock, and flushed, sweaty skin may indicate heart attacks. You can also look for blue or cyanotic skin, which indicates lack of oxygen or poor perfusion, and also yellow skin which indicates jaundice. Next is capillary refill (called cap refill for short), which measures perfusion throughout the body. You can check cap refills easily by pressing down on the nail bed of a finger or toe so that it becomes white, then release the pressure so color returns to the nail. If it takes two seconds or less, that is normal cap refill, but if it takes more time that is a sign the patient is in shock. Last is eye signs. To check eye signs, all you need to do is shine a light in the patient’s eyes (individually) to make sure they contract and dilate properly and also to check that their pupils are the same size, as well as round.

We’ve also begun practicing our medical/trauma assessments, which are a large part of an EMT’s job. Medical assessments are the investigative part of being an EMT, evaluating the nature of illness or mechanism of injury that is affecting the patient, and how to determine and fix any apparent life threats. In theory it’s easy, just find out what the problem is and address it. However, it always varies patient to patient, so there are really no easy answers or fixes. You just need to know the textbook procedures and acronyms, which can be long, and there’s a lot of them. Ultimately, I need to practice a variety of different scenarios and be focused when it comes to studying.

So with that I’ll leave you to go study some more, and I hope you have a good rest of your week,

• Abbott Springston