Cooling Blankets

[kesmith2314]

I was wondering if you guys could give me input on the use of cooling blankets in your ICUs. Our clinical practice committe has been trying to come up with standard guidelines and I have had tough time finding literature of the uses of colling blankets. What I wonder is do you place the blanket on the patient anterior or postior? Also do you use the automatic mode or manual mode and if the manual mode is used what tempature do you set the machine to cool at? Any input will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Karen

[The Frog]

Hey guys. I'm a new comer here on allnurses.com. So, I had a patient once with a temp of 106. I place a cooling blanket. His temp decreased to 103 by day shift. During report the day shift nurse felt it was not a good idea to cool a patient with a blanket. The logic that she gave me was that our Infectious Disease Docs do not like them because the cold acutally shunts the blood to the core thereby actually increasing the temp to the core and upping the chances of brain damage. Side note: the patient did not have an Infectious Disease consult yet, so I went off another MDs order. This make any sense to any body or is that a ridiculous point?