Equipment vs Education

[CBEMT]

ut his hands were pink and warm..no longer clamped on the armrests of his chair, breathing was starting to ease, pulse rate was down 25 BPM,

:shock:

The guy who complains only of a headache, yet has a pulse of 150 and a BP of 90. That's where we separate the firemonkeys from the medical professionals. The firemonkeys will immediately treat it as SVT either accomplish nothing, or drop his pressure to 40. But the medical proefssionals will recognise it as progressive sepsis because they took a temp and did a FULL examination and found the abscess in his groin that he was too embarrassed to mention.

Sounds good, and I agree with the concept. Speaking for myself, I didn't have the ability to check a temp for the first 4 years of my career- no thermometer. So I had to rely on the patient's skin to decide if I was going with sepsis or not. IMHO I got pretty good at it, though.

I also can't honestly say I've ever thought about exposing a patient's groin when I've got vitals and conditions like that...