Hypothetical situation, thoughts?

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Hi, so I am going through a lecture about trauma and I began wondering what nurses are allowed to do in emergency situations in "the field" or life outside the hospital? If your assessments of a person says they have a tension pneumothorax, their trachea is already shifted and etc, and you can tell time is running out, do you have the ability to create a hole into the person's lungs to save them? What if they are aware and nod in acceptance of receiving that care knowing it is outside the "usual" scope of a nurse but may possibly be their only chance of survival? What would you do? What is allowed? How far would you go to help someone live if you know that immediate action is required? What is the legal course of action?

I've seen some pretty bad harm, including death, done by "Good Samaritans" who truly thought they knew what they were doing, but who were working out of their scope of practice. Some were even within their scope of practice but did not have all the information they needed before they proceeded to "help" and instead caused harm.

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

This whole thread reminds me of a very bad movie 2008 movie called the ruins where a guy who is going to go to medical school uses all his Eagle Scout training to perform double below the knee amputations using only a pocket knife, a book of matches, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a tube of Neosporin. Watch the movie to see how that turned out!

Hppy

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Haha. Thank you for all the responses! I apologize I haven't said so earlier. Obviously, I would not do this either as it is out of scope of practice. We were talking over such situations in class so I used this post as an experiment to see how other nurses would react to a similar situation. The responses have been both entertaining and informative!

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Specializes in Pedi.
How many of you remember the old show "ER" when "Nurse Hathaway" was being held hostage in a drug store and "saved" a shooting victim by not only traching him with a pen but relieving a pneumothorax with a tampon applicator? Last time I watched that hot mess.

That is exactly what I thought about reading the OP. Carol Hathaway is probably 75% of the reason why I became a nurse. Not that episode though.

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