Emergency Medicine at HCMC
The most important procedure in all of
medicine is the IV. You must be expert at placing an IV, and the only
way to be expert is to practice. Doing the IV on your patients is the
best way. It is not scut work! There are few procedures which are as
life saving as establishing IV access. Don’t wait until you are
trying to save a life in the stabilization (stab) room to practice. The
nurses will be glad to help you with your first few IVs and to give you
tips on particularly difficult patients. The ED supervisors will advise
you on and demonstrate other procedures such as laceration repair and
I and Ds (incision and drainage). (* see Wound Care/Lacerations
in this packet and ED Wound Care and Basic Laceration Repair in Additional
Reading
Materials) Whatever the procedure remember the associated clean up (especially "sharps")
and documentation.
2 cm lt. eye brow laceration, cleaned with normal saline, anesthetized
with 1% Lido plain/Bicarb, irrigated with NS, draped, explored without
FB or bony involvement, sutured with 5-0 Vicryl subcuticular and
6-0 Nylon simple sutures. There is a specialized function on Emstat for documenting procedures: use it!
On the back of student evaluation cards
there is an area to record those procedures you perform during any
given shift. I encourage you
to fill these out and you will receive a record of all your procedures
with your written evaluation. Students should not under any
circumstances perform bedside Ultrasound or pelvic examinations without
a faculty member or senior resident present.
For more information contact Richard
O. Gray MD.
Emergency
Medicine main page
Copyright © 2000 HCMC Emergency Medicine. All rights reserved.
Manual last modified: Wednesday May 07, 2003.
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