who does your casting and splinting?

[cjthegreat]

When people come in with broken bones, who is responsible for casting and/or splinting? Is it the techs, nurses, residents, or doctors? Does your hospital require any special training or certification?

[LanaConga]

Umm ... I would think the doc splinted your ankle so that you didn't leave the dept. with an unsupported, non-immobilized ankle. Don't ya think?

uhhh it was going to be splinted by the tech but he offered to do it instead. duh, and my friend who works in the department was laughing afterwards about the guys reputation.

[kaycee]

Both the RN's and the Techs are instructed on splinting. The Techs do it mostly but the nurses do it when the Tech is busy or when we have no tech.

The Docs never. Occasionally Ortho will come in for complicated reduction and they will cast. We do a lot of Peds, so the Peds Ortho is who we see the most along with his residents.

[mom2michael, MSN, RN, NP]

Ortho if they are on call and it's deemed necessary to have ortho do it.

Otherwise, the techs do it and they do a fine job I might add.

I was a tech during NS, I can put a splint on if necessary, it's just probably one of my least favorite things to do.

[Dave11, BSN, RN]

At my hospital, during the day an Ortho tech will come down and do the job. Other times it will be either the attending, the PA in fast track or a resident. Whoever is free first.

[jayne109, RN]

IN our ER, the nurses are only allowed to do the splinting with the fiberglass splinting. Only the Ortho doctors do actual Casting (cicular casting). We keep the stuff but rarely use it. We just use the ortho-glass splints.

[KatieBell]

Different things at different places.

One hospital had a ortho tech.

At one it was a Nurses aide with special casting training.

at one it was the nice ortho residents.

At one it was the nurses.

Never had docs do it, though I have a few times asked a doc tocome and look at what I wasdoing on a wierd fracture.Sounds odd, but I wanted to be able to chart that the higher careprovider hadseen the splint and approved of it.

[rgroyer1RNBSN, BSN, RN]

Our LPN's and techs do them, the RN's and doc's do more complicated ones, I personally suck at them and will call over an LPN or tech from fast track to do it, they are the pros there always doing them over there, I suck at them and would be $h7t up a creek if I had to do one.

[dortizjr1]

In my ED, routine splints (fiberglass or plaster) are applied by our ED techs. They go through a several hour class when they are first hired to learn all the different splints.

More complex fractures are sometimes splinted by our orthopedic surgeons when they come to see the patient in the ED.

I couldn't put a splint on if my patient's life depended on it. Wouldn't know where to start.

Almost the same where I work. We dont' have ED techs though. The nurses do all routine splints (metal or ortho glass), the ED Docs may do more complex fractures or just punt those to the orthopedic surgeons.

This week I've actually splinted several ulnar-radial fractures, (not routine) but I do ankles, wrists, forearms, finger and shins every night. I love the ortho glass splinting material.