Monitoring a patient’s vitals during anesthesia is extremely vital and cannot be stressed enough. Using the massive amount of technology and electrical instruments available within a surgical suite, machines can lie and should never be trusted. Your eyes and ears are you most valuable tools you have. Of course, there are the simple things of observing your patient’s heart rate and breathing rate with a stethoscope but there are many other things you can observation skills can tell you that machines can’t. For example, it is very important to open your patient’s eyes during surgery to investigate the position of the pupils. If the pupils cannot be seen, this can indicate a too deep and inappropriate level of anesthesia. Another example is checking
The normal core temperature in adults ranges between 36.5°C and 37.5°C and hypothermia can be defined as core body temperature less than 36°C.(ref 1)
“Technological advancements in anesthesia practice: Role of decision support system.” Anesthesia: Essays and Researches. January 8, 2014. Web. October 23, 2015. There have been many advancements in technology in the anesthesia field. A recent major advancement has been the decision support system (DSS). The decision support system acts similar to a second human central nervous system, and receives as well as relays information to and from the patient and the anesthesia information management system (AIMS). The DSS helps to maintain the data coming into and out of the patient during a medical procedure. The DSS also provides help during a medical crisis, giving the physicians a solution if an intra-operation (during the operation) crisis happens. The DSS can also design various scenarios for pre, intra, and post operation scenarios for the anesthesiologist to prepare for based on that patient’s medical history, information, and
Everyday life in a hospital is complete and absolute chaos. There are doctors and nurses running everywhere to treat patients, ambulances coming through every so often, children and patients crying, and surgeons telling a family that their loved one did not make it. However, outside of all that craziness is an operating room (OR). A place filled with pressure, intensity, high hopes, and stress. There to help control the environment is a surgical technologist. While preparing patients for surgery, surgical technologists manage the equipment and operating room, follow the instructions of the surgeon, and ensure the safety of the patient.
This essay describes how the anaesthetic machine and airway management equipment are prepared in operating theatres and discusses how they are ensured safe for use. It evaluates the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) guidelines related to safe practice and the preparation of the ET tubes, laryngeal masks, guedels, Naso pharyngeal airways and the laryngoscope. The function of the anaesthetic workstation is to deliver a mixture of anaesthetic agents and gases safely to the patient during the induction process and throughout surgery. In addition, it also provides ventilation to support breathing and monitors the patient’s vital signs to minimise the anaesthetic risks to the patient whilst in the care of health professionals. The pre-use check is vital to patient safety as an inadequate check of the anaesthetic machine or airway management equipment can and does lead to significant harm of the patient including mortality (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), 2008 and Magee, 2012).
Maintaining normal core body temperature (normothermia) in patients within perioperative environments is both a challenging and important aspect to ensure patient safety, comfort and positive surgical outcomes (Tanner, 2011; Wu, 2013; Lynch, Dixon & Leary, 2010). Normorthermia is defined as temperatures from 36C to 38C, and is maintained through thermoregulation which is the balance between heat loss and heat gain (Paulikas, 2008). When normothermia is not maintained within the perioperative environments, and the patient’s core body temperature drops below 36C, they are at risk of developing various adverse consequences due to perioperative hypothermia (Wagner, 2010). Perioperative hypothermia is classified into three
Hypothermia is a common problem in surgical patients. Up to 70% of patients experience some degree of hypothermia that is undergoing anesthetic surgery. Complications include but are not limited to wound infections, myocardial ischemia, and greater oxygen demands. The formal definition of hypothermia is when the patient’s core body temperature drops below 36 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to synthesize what studies reveal about the current state of knowledge on the effects of pre-operative warming of patient’s postoperative temperatures. I will discuss consistencies and contradictions in the literature, and offer possible explanations for the inconsistencies. Finally I will provide preliminary conclusions on whether the research provides strong evidence to support a change in practice, or whether further research is needed to adequately address your inquiry.
American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Professional Aspects of Nurse Anesthesia Practice. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1994. Print.
JB McKenzie, et al. "STRATEGIES USED BY CRITICAL CARE NURSES TO IDENTIFY, INTERRUPT, AND CORRECT MEDICAL ERRORS." American Journal of Critical Care 19.6 (2010): 500-509. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
Anesthesiologists have many responsibilities. 3They measure the patient’s temperature, pulse, heart rate, and breathing rate while under the sedative. They have...
Everyday, people go through surgery and require a specialist that will monitor their surgery as well as give them what they need to be able to persevere the pain, which is exactly what anesthesiologists do. In order for the patients to be able to get into surgery and deal with the agonizing aches after the abscission, anesthesiologists have to give the sufferer the proper treatment before and after the surgery. Overall, anesthesiologists must be highly educated in both medicine and communication, they need to be able to give the patient the right amount of medicine as well as speak with the family of patients and other doctors to inform them all with what will be done during the surgery, and they need to be able to properly assist the surgeons during operations.
We had a specific order of how to set up the patient before their procedure. The first and most important step was to fill out the patient’s consent form and for the patient and the dental assistant to both agree on the procedure that is being done to them during surgery. After getting the patient to sign consent form I hooked them up to the monitors (blood pressure cuff, pulse ox, thermometer, EKG pads, and oxygen). The next step was to set up the surgery room with all the necessities we would need to start an I.V. patient. Dr. Ellis used an eighteen-gauge catheter and a lidocaine wheel to help with discomfort. There were two different types of I.V. bags we kept on hand. The primary type we used was Sodium Chloride 0.9%, which is basically salt water, and the other was Dextrose 5%, which was used for some diabetic patients. Once the I.V. was started Dr. Ellis would begin to give them medication. He administered four different types to most
Vital signs are very important measurements that should be done with little to no errors. As humans, we often make silly mistakes here and there, but as a medical assistant we must pay close attention to every detail. When we first meet a patient, start with small talk to see how the person is feeling. If we can tell that the patient is angry, or seems to be in a bad mood we could expect to see an elevated pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. If we can calm the patient down, their new vitals would be more accurate. Errors happen all the time with anything in life. Contributing factors in inaccurate vital sign readings include:
This reflection of vital signs will go into discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of each vital sign and the importance of each of them. Vital signs should be assessed many different times such as on admission to a health care facility, before and after something substantial has happened to the patient such as surgery and so forth (ref inter). I learned to assess blood pressure (BP), pulse (P), temperature (T) and respiration (R) and I will reflect and discuss which aspects were more difficult and ways to improve on them. While pulse, respiration and temperature were fairly easy to become skilled at, it was blood pressure which was a bit more difficult to understand.
Vital signs are an important factor in the nursing process. Nurses every day assess a patient’s vital signs every hour, sometimes even every fifteen minutes depending on the situation. These vital signs include: heart rate, respirations, blood pressure, and temperature. Today, nurses also treat pain as the fifth vital sign because of its importance to the nursing process as a whole. Pain is an undesirable side effect that arises from many disease processes and surgical procedures. It is not the same to every person that experiences it. Many things can affect how a patient perceives their own pain. Some aspects that alter a patient’s way of perceiving pain are culture, past experiences with pain, age, gender, and the ability to
I went to the operating room on March 23, 2016 for the Wilkes Community College Nursing Class of 2017 for observation. Another student and I were assigned to this unit from 7:30am-2:00pm. When we got their we changed into the operating room scrubs, placed a bonnet on our heads and placed booties over our shoes. I got to observe three different surgeries, two laparoscopic shoulder surgeries and one ankle surgery. While cleaning the surgical room for the next surgery, I got to communicate with the nurses and surgical team they explained the flow and equipment that was used in the operating room.