I've been an RN for 7 years in acute psych inpatient and administered CPR for the first time just this week. I never even had a chance to administer CPR as a student and have been lucky enough to have not needed it in 7 years of practice. It was also my first time ever using anything other than a practice AED.
Pt. fell suddenly, possibly hitting her head on a desk (no trauma noted) and was unresponsive. APN present could not locate a pulse and CPR was initiated.
The AED was expectedly as dummy-proof as the practice ones - I opened it up, threw the pads on and let it do its thing. AED advised a shock and the patient was shocked once. CPR was resumed and pt. was responsive within about 30 seconds. We detached the AED.
EMS arrived, took over, and transferred pt. to hospital. But, one of paramedics apparently questioned "Why did you guys shock her?" in a condescending tone. I wasn't present at this point but other nurses felt that he was implying we did something wrong. It's my understanding that they shock manually based on the rhythm they see. But I also assume he knows that we use automatic defib that does all that work for us.
This seems pretty straight-forward, right? Putting an AED on an unresponsive pt. with no pulse and allowing it to shock when advised?
The AED only shocks if it deems necessary, which means she was in an appropriate arrhythmia?
I've yet to return to work and assume we'll debrief with admin on this as it's something that is extremely rare at our facility so I've just been sitting around kind of anxious about it.
JKL33
7,038 Posts
"That's what they do on T.V."