Practicing Skills

During the month of September in my Outdoor Emergency Care class, we have gone over some pretty interesting subjects. There has been a lot of lecturing and powerpoints in my class which is a little boring. After living through all the boring stuff we get to practice our skills at the end of our class. Some of the skills we've practiced are getting vital signs( blood pressure, pulse, and respirations), assessments, c-spining, and using different types of traction splints.
We get vital signs by using a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope, a watch, and our handy dandy fingers. For blood pressure you put blood pressure cuff around the bicep of one arm then you blow up the cuff to about 200 and place the stethoscope right near the end of the cuff near the elbow. Once you have your stethoscope in place you release the pressure in the cuff and listen for sound and look at the gauge on the cuff at the same time. Once you hear the first sound remember the number it started at, this will be your systolic reading. Then you wait for the sound to stop and look at what number it stopped at, this will be your diastolic reading. Once you are done taking blood pressure you will have the reading as systolic/diastolic. For taking a pulse, there are many different places on the body to take the pulse. The most common place is the radial pulse also known as the pulse on your wrist. You simply take a pulse and count the beats for 15 seconds then multiply the beats you get by 4 so you can get how many beats you get in one minute. Getting someone's respirations is just counting there breaths for 15 seconds then multiplying by 4. This sounds really easy but most people in the class had a really difficult time with it. The best way to do it is put your hand on the person's back if they don't mind and then start counting because then you can feel every time there back goes up and down for a breath.
Assessments is for getting the patient's chief complaint, any pain they have, finding out their past medical history, and figuring out what the best course of action. We do this by asking A LOT of questions. During the course of an assessment, we first check to make sure the scene is safe.Then we go up to the patient and say "Hi this is Jackie with Ski Patrol, may I help you?" By saying this statement we INTRODUCE OURSELVES and GET CONSENT to help our patient. Once we get consent, we ask our patient their name, what time it is, where they are, and what did they do to get into this situation. This is the indicating factor for checking how awake and oriented they are. This also lets us know that they have an open AIRWAY, they are BREATHING, and they have CIRCULATION. Once we know this information we go into asking the patient if they have any allergies, what medications they're on, if they've been taking their medications and when was the last time they did so, when was their last oral intake, etc. Once all these questions are done we have our SAMPLE and OPQRST out of the way. Then we begin to palpate and check the body for any signs or symptoms of injury and pain. After we check the patient's body, we then begin to take standard precautions in helping relieve pain for this patient and getting them to a higher level of medical care.
C-spining is designed for patients who have a spinal injury or patients that are unconscious. You put a c-collar on them and then strap them down to a backboard and load and go.
We practiced traction splinting which is used for closed mid shaft femur fractures. These splints are designed to pull traction to the fractured are to relieve some pain. Femur fractures are really painful because your femur is the biggest bone in your body and it contains a lot of blood. You can die from a femur fracture. There are two different types of traction splints that we practiced with, the Sager splint and the Hare splint. The Sager splint is easier to use and has less straps and you only pull 10% of the person's body weight but no more than 15 pounds. With the Hare splint, you pull traction until the persons feels relief on the injured area.

This is a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope used for taking someone's blood pressure.

This is a Hare splint used for pulling traction until the person feels relief on a closed mid-shaft femur fracture. 

This is a Sager splint used for pulling 10% of a patient's body weight but no more than 15 pounds of traction on a closed mid-shaft femur fracture. 

This is a backboard with straps that you used for strapping a patient with a spinal injury or someone who is unconscious for transportation.

This is a c-collar used to stabalize the patient's neck when they have a spinal injury.