It started a new series tonight. Best TV show there is but even I’m a wreck now, 26 years working frontline and it still pulls you through all the emotions. 😥
Drac – you see the head huggers – in all the 24hrs in A&E progs I’ve seen they have fitted them velcro side up, but when I was trained to use them it was always velcro side down. Any ideas why they do it velcro side up?
Lay in one of those beds in the corner after my accident and was treated by the staff in the series. It wasn’t on film. A bit too close to home for me.
We have access to spinal boards and scoops – the senior medics at the club always go for the spinal boards. What’s the benefit of the scoop for suspected spinal injuries?
No/minimal log rolling. Loads better. Plus who actually has a dead straight spine? Mines a nice S shape, me. Long boards; daft things used in the absense of anything better. Occasionally useful as an extraction device, but we don’t do that as much as we used to either.
And a little bit of advice to all those budding immobilisers out there, upside down blocks is okay, but using them the right way up but on opposite sides is betterer…
V8 pretty much covers it. No one has a straight spine, the scoop allows you to lift them pretty much in the position they are in.
We removed spinal boards from routine use nearly 4 years ago now before that they were, as V8 says, occasionally used for extraction but we’re moving/moved away from that too.
HEMS have a good clear policy that you may find useful.
If you google the Faculty of Prehospital Care consensus guidelines on immobilisation, you will see a clear recommendation against the use of the longboard, except to facilitate extrication, along with the reasoning.
I’ve not been watching the past few series, OH being a doctor means it’s a bit close to work to get on the TV, but there was a moment in one of the early episodes which has really stuck with me as one of the most touching TV moments I can remember. An very nice old chap had come to hospital with his wife who was, sadly, dying. He was holed up in the relatives’ room on his own, leafing through the pamphlets when he picked up one about, I think, teenage drug abuse which caught his eye and pocketed it in that weird detached way that you do in the surreality that hospital waiting rooms afford you. Immediately afterwards they came in and informed him that his wife had died and I think I had a bit of a dusty moment.
