ErikaRNC

I have taught "Basic Life Support for Health Care Providers". (BLS for Health Care Providers is made up of CPR, Foreign Body Airway Obstruction, and the use of Automated External Defibrillators.) I love to learn and to teach (there's no better way to learn than to teach) so I completed the American Heart Association's (AHA's) BLS Instructor Course with re-certs. I have taught BLS (mostly re-certification) not only to my nursing colleagues and our community's EMTs/Paramedics, but also to the physicians on staff at our hospital. The best performances were done by the EMTs/Paramedics -- they were very impressive -- excellent to-the-letter form and no hesitations. :yelclap: Of the three fields of providers (nurses, physicians, and EMT/Paramedics) they administer BLS most often. The least impressive were the physicians. It was as if they were seeing BLS for the first time while watching the others during this re-cert class and trying to remember what they just saw. :uhoh21: They needed hints as to the next step, they needed to be corrected in their form -- like "head tilt & chin lift" instead of the old hand under victim's neck. While the EMTs/Paramedics earned my confidence if ever I needed them, the physicians were frighteningly incompetent. I can only guess that they felt they were "too busy with more important things than a mandatory BLS re-cert class" to take the time to learn a life or death skill correctly. I also completed the AHA's Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Provider Course with re-certs. An interesting reason why I chose to complete ACLS: I was a few months into chemotherapy for the Lymphoma diagnosed at age 29. Staged at III out of IV meant I wasn't sure if I would survive. So among the things I wished to accomplish before my death -- the list was limited because I couldn't travel while being treated -- was completing ACLS because it had a tough reputation of being very intimidating. This was back in the late 1980's when everything you did to the Mega Code Manikins was strictly monitored by machines with print-out graphs, not just instructors. So there I was with my waxy paleness (anemic) moon-face (prednisone), buffalo hump (prednisone), scraggly-head (chemo), unsettled stomach (chemo), atrophied breasts (ovarian failure at age 30 due to chemo) not feeling human at all but rather like an asexual being -- an ogre that just climbed down out of its bell tower. But I was motivated! And so I did great on both the written exam and getting through the long Mega Code scenario despite the instructor's (an ER physician) attempts to trip me (he did that to everyone) up. Now I could say to others that feared the infamous and intimidating ACLS Mega Code "I did it while anemic due to chemo, and so you can too!" :wink2: A reminder: Anemia (erythrocytopenia) not only makes one physically weak, quickly out of breath, but also mentally not the sharpest knife in the drawer. A couple of weeks ago I heard a report on NPR (National Public Radio) state that the single rescuer CPR's compression:breath ratio has changed from 15:2 to 30:2 for all ages of victims (infant, child, adult). Text books yet to include change. ~ ErikaRNC

ER is the only one I've seen enough of to comment on. Some things are so blatantly wrong -- like scrubbing for surgery before mask is on.

Within 6 months of graduating from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Nursing I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma stage III (of IV) and admitted to UNMC. I think I was a great patient to the nurses (I didn't even ask for a shower curtain that was missing in my shared bathroom because I didn't want to bother my nurses with something so trivial; yes I showered without a curtain), but I certainly was (and still am) aggressive and demanding of the different physicians that rotated through the cancer service. Because I not only was a nursing student at UNMC, I had worked there as a phlebotomist and so I knew the ins and outs of getting my most recent lab results before any of my doctors did. Hey -- it's MY life. I loved my main Oncologist Dr. Armitage ("Call me 'Jim'") who was wonderful beyond expectation in both intelligence and compassion. But another Oncologist, whose named rhymed with the title of a current movie at the time "The Wrath of Kahn" butted heads with me without shame. I refused to let him touch me! One of the times "Dr. Kahn" was the admitting doctor when I needed to be admitted for being "hot and low" (high fever with pancytopenia) "Dr. Kahn", with his entourage of med students told me I needed to have a Lumbar Puncture. I let go of all civility and made it unmistakenly clear that I would not allow him to perform the LP on me. I guess I may have embarrassed him in front of his idolizing students, or the students may have made up their minds that I was one of those horrific "difficult patients". I would only allow Dr. Armitage to do the LP. "Dr. Kahn" said that was a mistake because Dr. Armitage hadn't done an LP in a while. Fact that may be, but I was steadfast. Dr. Armitage did my LP without incident as the med students watched a now very pleasant patient complying by taking the fetal position to allow the insertion of a spinal needle into the sterile spine and aspirate the brain-bathing fluid. I remain a staunch supporter of patient empowerment -- even if it means a patient decides to use his/her empowerment to defer decisions to others. ~ Erika RN,C