Did Chest Compressions Yesterday

Nursing Students General Students

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Specializes in Acute Mental Health.

I'm finishing my last semester and was assigned ICU for 8 hr off site experience. Simply means my instructor isn't around and I'm basically shadowing a nurse. A code was called from ER and a nurse from ICU has to attend. Their role is to document everything the code team does. They also called the secondary team which comes when cpr is already being done in the field.

To my delight, there was a fellow student readying the room when we came in. The ambulance wasn't there yet so we had time to help get the room ready. The team asked if I wanted to do chest compressions and being the ever wanting to learn student that I am, excitedly said yes!

Pt comes in with EMT doing chest compressions and another bagging. We take over and I started compressions. It wasn't anything like when we go for CPR recertification. There is no 1 and 2 and 3... you just basically go nuts! Here I am pumping up and down for what seemed like eternity (boy, you get tired quickly!) and they watch you and tell you "go faster". During recertification they always tell me to slow down! I think I made it about 7 minutes and started to get really tired. I switched off with another person and felt totally exhausted for the next 30 minutes.

It was a really cool experience as a student! Pt did not make it, but the experience was still totally awesome! Sick hey!

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Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

No, not sick, lol. Gets the adrenaline going doesn't it? :)

But they should not have let you go 7 minutes, BLS/ACLS guidelines call for changing out every 3-4 minutes in order to keep the compressions full force and fast.

That said, I had no one to relieve me once, I pumped for 56 minutes on a mountain side, (someone else doing resps) waiting for the helicopter. He stayed pretty pink (compared to the body next to us), but obviously didn't make it either. Had to try for his family though.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

cool, isn't it? the staff in the ccu are worse. those crazies keep codes going forever sometimes. even the burliest of men get fatigued doing cpr. you know what else isn't like the certification classes? heimlich.

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wow. thats awesome...I just got my CPR certification on Wednesday, I would love to be able to jump in and give compressions! High five to you! :)

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