Nurses taking patient's off backboards without doctor clearnce?

The place I am currently working takes their patients off the back bard before the doctors clear the pt. Dose anyone know or heard of this practice anywhere and what studies have done to backed this practice up.
thanks

I worked in the ER for years and would never take a patient off a backboard without a doctor's order. You can not maintain spinal immobilization with just a c-collar. If you have TNCC you know that the head needs to be taped to the board to completely immobilize the c-spine. You can not trust the patient to hold there head in a neutral position. In fact our computerized charting asks which physician gave the order. It only takes one c-spine fx to make you lose your license.

they'll stay on the board until hell freeze over or until er doc or neuro/ortho doc tells me to take'em off.

litsen if a patient is brought in the er on spinal percautions by ems that right there has set the standard of care for that patient until the patient is medically cleared by a doc it is prudent that you keep that patient on the percautions and i tell you that you would be very liable if you took it upon yourself to remove the percautions "even if you did a through assessment of the patient" and turned out the pt had fx,strain or nerve damage that could've been aggrevated by you removing them from the board or d/c'ing the c-collar.

hey if ems thinks it's a good idea to put the patient on a board to begin with i'm sure as heck not going to remove it until cleared by the doc, and i'd advise you to do the same.

at which point you've broguht them a potentially fatal condition or at the very least a much prolonged stay in hospital which we heal and/or surgically repeair th iatrogenic pressure ulcers



why bother going to univerisity for 4 years if all you do is wait for orders from the big clever doctors...
well gosh darn... i guess that little 2yr community college i went to would be frowned upon there in england... nope no big fancy 4 yr university for poor ole country boy me. just shows that i don't need 4yrs of nursing school to keep my but from being sued.




given that the US lets people with 110 hours of cookbook protocol following training ride on emergency ambulances ... we have better trained first aiders in rightpondia than that...

if you were an inexperienced Dutch RN then maybe ( dutch paramedics are all Nurse Practitioners)

now i guess thats a slander on our ems system here in poor ole mississippi...gosh darn..heck it's a wonder that folks survive down here. in the real world i'm not a dutch rn...and i don't know nothing of 110hrs of protocols, i'm a asn degree icu/er rn with ccrn and studying for cen..1lt in army nurse in ms nat. guard, thats right 2yr nsg degree..i guess here in mississippi they figure we can learn in 2 yrs what it takes ya'll 4 yrs to learn. and futhermore our hospitals have indoor plumbming in mississippi..

Ok, but my question is.....

So if you keep the patient on the spinal board until the doctor assesses, and the patient is found to have a fracture.......they don't go back onto the spinal board do they? Do they go back onto the hospital stretcher with c-collar on? So the board is coming off anyways right? Only meant for transport?

I understand what you're all saying about not wanting to remove the board on your own b/c what if the pt got a fracture during your non-doctor roll. But, when you do roll, a doctor doesn't routinely take the head do they? The nurses are still the ones doing the roll, with the doctor palpating the spine right??

again i reinterate, if you take upon yourself to clear a patient from a spinal package "no matter how long they have been on the board" and the patient suffers any deteriation from that action, you will be held liable in court, all the tncc and phtls courses that you've been to will not save you from being slam dunked...now i can't speak of the laws in england but here in the usa you'd be screwed. all you young er nurses out there pay heed...