Scary Story

Published

Holy smokes. Last night, we got a pt back from the OR. He had multiple gunshot wounds to chest and abdomen. We'd had him for 1.5 weeks, not looking too good and starting to develop ARDS. When the OR team wheeled him in, his arterial pressure was in the 60s, O2 sats also in the 60s, HR 140s. They were using a portable vent which ended up on my side of the bed. The RT switched him to the vent and immediately his sats started increasing. I was a little suspicious and checked the gauge on O2 tank they were using to see if it was full and discovered that it wasn't even turned on. :eek: The RT was pretty new, but he had 3 nurses and an anesthesiologist with him as well and someone should have checked it, for goodness sake. It was a big reminder that seemingly small mistakes can end up being life-or-death mistakes.

Specializes in MICU/SICU.
We got a RAT call the other day for resp failure-turns out was hooked up to BiPap but the BiPap tubing wasn't connected to BiPap. RAT team found it......

What's "RAT" ?:confused:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in LTC, Med/Surg, Peds, ICU, Tele.

Rapid Assessment Team =RAT

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in MICU/SICU.

Oh.....:bugeyes:.(duh)..our version is Rapid Response Team. I"ll go have that second cup of coffee now...:idea:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU.

The worst bipap error I recall is the nurse that transferred a pt to us on Bipap through the Vision machine. The nurse didn't realise it wouldn't work if not plugged in (ours has no battery back up) and the pt was effectively being suffocated. We use synchrony bipap for transfers usually but she hadn't.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion