Writing this I realized that the arguement I often use to give a patient another dose of morphine in the parking lot is that time to the hospital doesn’t always equate to time to medical care in the hospital. Studies have shown hospitals can have a median time of 149 minutes to medication after triage. I wonder what the numbers are with regards to time to the hospital versus time to the bedpan in the hospital.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for the Street and Smith’s Annual Baseball issue to hit the newsstand so I could check out how their experts thought the Red Sox would be in that coming Spring — what was the projected lineup? Who were the hot rookies? Who would win the pennant?…Now I wait every five years for the American Heart Association’s ECC Guidelines. What kind of CPR will we be doing? Any changes in ALS drugs?
Do ACLS medications make any difference in cardiac arrest?…Now a new study has come out that makes the best attempt yet to answer this crucial question, as well as another question I have often wondered about. “If the drugs aren’t doing any good, is it the drugs’ fault or perhaps the fault of poor CPR?”
When asked by newer medics to talk about the city “back in the day,” my tales would always begin: “There I was in bullet proof vest, largynescope in one hand, narcan syringe in the other, two bags of fluid ready to run wide open, hanging from my teeth…” (For the record, I have never worn a bullet-proof vest).