Advanced Surgery Emergency Room: 10 Tips
Emergency services are known worldwide for providing expert care that saves many lives. However, when people think of emergency rooms (ER), the dramatic and horrific scenes they watch in movies and television often flood their minds.
When in an Emergency room, may activities unfold inside the room to make sure that the patients’ life is out of danger. An advanced surgery is among the many events that medics perform in the ER.
Frontline ER takes you through some of the tips the physicians and doctors perform surgery in an emergency room
Triage
On arrival at an emergency department, the first stopover is always triage. Here, the condition of each patient is assessed and prioritized by a nurse on duty. The situation can be prioritized into three major categories:
• Life-threatening emergency
• Urgent but not life-threatening cases
• The less urgent cases
Triage is a necessary stage to enable patients with life-threatening conditions not to be kept in the waiting line for long. The nurse records your vital respiratory and metabolic activities in the body like pulse rate, blood pressure, body temperature and even the respiratory rate.
The nurse also makes inquiries about the patients’ brief history of the medical complaint at hand to determine the appropriate category of triage the patient requires.
In most cases, patients with less urgent conditions are taken into the emergency rooms after those with urgent and life-threatening conditions have been considered.
Patient Registration
At this stage, the medical team is provided with vital statistics and insurance information. This stage helps in developing a medical record that keeps all the medical histories, lab tests, and the x-ray tests. The information from this stage is also helpful in generating medical bills after the whole process is over. However, for patients that require urgent medication like surgery, this stage can always be skipped and done at the convenience of the doctor or when the patient has stabilized.
Differential Diagnosis
Patients are brought into an examination room after registration. The nurse gets you ready for examination. Many hospitals have different departments for examining patients. The areas include Pediatric Emergency rooms, Chest Pain Emergency rooms, and Trauma Centers. An emergency physician then comes in to formulate a list of conditions that may be related to your condition before a diagnostic test in case the symptoms are not enough.
Treatment
After the doctor has collected all the information, a surgeon may be consulted to ascertain the severity of the diagnosis. The surgeon also receives the lab data, performs some physical examination then explains the procedure before the patient is allowed to sign a consent form. Patients who are unconscious have their consent forms signed by a family member or next of kin. The consent forms give the surgeons the go-ahead to perform the surgery.
Surgery emergency rooms involve many people who are always on toes to deliver their best for the patients. The team includes:
Emergency physician, emergency nurses, physician assistants and emergency unit secretary. The surgeon’s job is to perform the surgical operation based on the diagnosis done by emergency physicians and nurses. The emergency unit secretary is in charge of all communications coming from the Emergency Room.
Anesthesia
Advanced surgery cases involve the use of a medicine called anesthesia. The medicine is used to suppress any pain resulting from the surgery. Anesthesia can be of different types:
Local anesthesia blocks pain around the specific area of surgery, regional anesthesia involves the injection of medicines that make the whole body numb and general anesthesia puts the patient in a deep sleep during the whole surgical process.
Oxygen Monitoring
While the operation is going on, the doctors observe the oxygen intake of the patient. A stethoscope and a cardiac monitor are the most used tools. The monitor displays visual wavelike motions on how the heart is pumping blood while the stethoscope monitors the heartbeat. A clip is also placed on the finger to measure oxygen levels while the cuff on the arm measures blood pressure.
Protection From Infections
During surgery, the inner body is exposed hence infections can easily kick in. Doctors, therefore, inject patients with antibiotics to prevent the infections from causing other serious conditions.
Prevention Against Cardiac Arrest
During a surgical operation, cardiac arrest is a concern that can happen at any time. Doctors have tools for combating cardiac arrest.
A Defibrillator is used to discharge electric shock waves. The aim of the tool is to shock the heartbeat back to normal. When the patient is breathing abnormally, endotracheal intubation equipment is placed into the trachea to enhance natural breathing. Cardiac medicine are always stand by to also help just in case.
Anti-Anesthetic Infections
Patients mostly wake up after the operation. However, some administered with anti-anesthetic drugs to help them wake up from sleep.
Disposition
Depending on the patients’ condition after waking up, the patient can be discharged or taken back to the ward. However, for cases where there is no improvement, patients are referred for further medical assistance.
Are you suffering from any condition that is causing you sleepless nights, FrontLine ER has a team of qualified doctors that will offer you the best treatment.
