First ER rotation!

[cherokeesummer]

Hi all, I haven't been as active as I used to be b/c I have a baby now! :):) Well he is almost 11 months old so not a baby anymore!

I have my first ER rotation this weekend, any suggestions? I am going to review basic head to toe assessment b/c the teach wants us to do a full body in depth instead of focused assessments.

Also I think I will review MI's and other stuff that she said is frequently common in the ED.

Any other suggestions? It's a level II trauma center so I'm thinking we'll see some interesting stuff. But its also the weekend so we'll probably get a lot of minor illnesses too.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

here are some links for you to check on. while i've linked you to critcal care stuff, a lot of times what you see in er is stuff like abdominal pain (a lot!) and sick kids with temps and ear aches! on the weekend you're likely to see a lot of accidents and things that people would normally go to a doctor's office for.

http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/meded/medicine/pulmonar/pd/contents.htm - the physical exam - this site is set up for medical students, but nursing students can learn from it as well. this link takes you to a page of links to the various parts of the body to be examined. when you link into a body part you will find an explanation of the method to examine that site and what is normal, a button at the bottom labeled "abnormal" will bring up information about abnormal findings during examination of that site. there are also some photographs with some of the pages. the "knowledge" button gives you a little outline breakdown of the pathophysiology going on. a fourth button, "self eval" is a list of test questions--remember these are designed for medical students, so don't feel badly if you miss a few. this is from loyola university medical school.

http://medicine.ucsd.edu/clinicalmed/introduction.htm - a very nice site to help with doing physical assessments of patients from the university of california, san diego. explains how to examine the various parts of the body and has lots of photographs showing abnormal conditions and how to assess for them.

http://www.fpnotebook.com/cv31.htm - immediate management of acute coronary syndrome (in the er) - you will find links on the left side of the page to other topics regarding the treatment of mi (acute coronary syndrome), especially if you are looking for the medication. also, check out nurse bob's micu/icu survival guide for the medications (i've given you a link below).

http://www.geocities.com/nyerrn/2/p/video.htm - listing of videos of procedures and skills from er nurse, some paramedic skills here also

http://rnbob.tripod.com/ - nurse bob's micu/icu survival guide

http://www.icufaqs.org/ - links to icu procedures

http://www.medicineau.net.au/clinical/icu/procedures/home.html - icu procedures, many links to lots of nursing procedures

just for fun!

http://www.trauma.org/resus/moulage/moulage.html - from trauma.org this is a fun interactive site of patient scenarios where you get to test your trauma treatment skills! your adventure begins with this: "a call breaks the quiet of the early morning trauma room. the on scene paramedics inform you that they are with a 26 year old male who was the restrained driver (no airbag) of a saloon car that had an argument (at 50mph / 80kph) with a telegraph pole and lost. the driver has been trapped in the car for around 30 minutes but is now free and has an open leg wound that is bleeding copiously and he is somewhat aggressive (glasgow coma score 14 - e4v4m6. they will be with you in ten minutes." from thereon you are presented with choices of actions to take. as i deliberated chose the wrong actions i laughed and laughed at the responses that came up on the screen. talk about learning priorities . . .

[cherokeesummer]

This is awesome! Thank you so much - I'm going to start on these right now!