Power-Outage Points

Patient Assessment System

It looks complicated, but break it down into sections and you've totally got this!

The Patient Assessment System is designed to help you answer the question "What do I do first?".

The Primary Assessment is in order of what will kill your patient that fastest, so it's important to go through the assessment in that order.

Secondary Assessment can be in whatever order seems appropriate for the Pts condition

TAKE OFF THE @#$%ING BOOT!!!!!!

For reals, though. If you leave shoes/restrictive clothing on under a splint, you not only lose the ability to assess skin signs, you risk that boot turning into a crappy tourniquet as swelling increases, leading to compartment syndrome and potential life-long repercussions for your patient.

Principles of Splinting

Spinal Clearing

Process

If the patient has 1 of these 6 Mechanism Of Injuries, be suspicious of a Spinal Injury.

Hold C-Spine as you go through your Primary and Secondary Assessments.

If there has been no evidence of ANY signs or symptoms of Spinal injuries, then you can follow the Clearing process. Make sure you take care of any other injuries first, your Pt is sober, your Pt has + CSMs in all extremities, and you've re-assessed the spine a 3rd time.

Then, you can take your Pt through the Range Of Motion test you learned in class.

In Backcountry Medicine, we have a different set of protocols for possible spine injuries for a few different reasons. We have a MUCH longer transport time to Definitive care (hours to days), we need to worry about the environment posing a threat to our patient's health, and we have limited resources. For these reasons, and the research on spinal immobilization from the past 15 years, our Backcountry protocols involve full spinal assessments and the ability to confirm the absence of injury. This allows our patients to be moved off of cold, wet ground, wrapped in warm layers, supported in positions of function and comfort, and to walk out of the woods under there own power.

Fueling Your Body

and

Maintaining your Temperature

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse