Powerful Cardiac Monitoring: Fill & Download for Free

My wife had an instructor in nursing school who was angry with her regarding some imagined infraction. My wife was interested in becoming a trauma nurse and asked for her internship to be on the cardiac floor, so that she could learn telemetry (cardiac monitoring). The instructor assigned her to the indigent infectious disease floor which was populated with patients suffering with AIDS/HIV, TB and other infectious diseases. She learned tons and LOVED her work on that floor. When we would walk downtown, often a homeless person would yell “Hey Nurse Cindy!” and talk with us as long lost friends.The floor nurses were so taken with her work that as the year ended, she was offered a first shift job on the floor. She was the only graduate out of 65 nursing students who landed a first shift position straight out of nursing school. Within months, she became Assistant Charge Nurse and within two years of graduating she became the nursing director of an AIDS hospice.She continued her work with AIDS patients while we were missionaries in Thailand and today is a hospice nurse manager. She’s an amazing nurse who has had the opportunity to help many because of a teacher who sent her to the AIDS unit to teach her a lesson about his power over her career. In reality, he had no power over her career. What was meant for harm became a true blessing for Cindy and for her many patients over the years.

First of all, just DON'T.Most likely, with an AED…nothing. As in I would think nothing would happen. Why?On an Automatic External Defibrillator there are 2 buttons, “power” and “shock”.I think it was around 1998 they removed the “stupid” button. Anyway. AEDs have a built in program that will only allow them to charge (and thus shock) if a certain lethal cardiac rhythm is noted. If the unit doesn't charge itself, pushing the shock button is like asking my kids to do something, pointless.If, on the other hand, you have access to a cardiac monitor (which would most likely mean you have some formal medical training), say over and over to yourself 100 times, “would you like to supersize that meal for only $1.49 more?”

I am finding so many of these questions touching on so many of my memories.It was New Years Eve in my ICU, Karen was 54 yrs old and in a coma from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. She was on a ventilator to support her breathing, a cardiac monitor and medication to support her blood pressure. Her family was struggling for several days trying to make the decision to make her a DNR (do not resuscitate ) and/or to remove her from the respirator. Her EEG and brain scans showed no brain activity (in our state this constitutes death.)In another bed was Al, a 34 yr old chronic alcoholic was going through the DT’s. (A true medical emergency that must be managed or he could die.) He was out of control and violent and needed to have an aid at his bedside around the clock to keep him from hurting himself or others. The tension in the unit was extremely high with his yelling, screaming and cursing. At times it took all of the staff 5 of us just to keep him in bed. Yes, he was given as much medication as possible but he seemed unaffected by them. One particular outbreak required security and the entire staff to control his outrageous behavior. After about 15 -20 mins he calmed down with the help of extra meds. We all could get went back to our own patients at that point.Ellen went back to check on Karen and found that something was very wrong. Her room was completely silent & dark, no monitor beeps, no ventilator hissing and no IV pumps pumping. Nothing at all. She stood at the door stunned and called for help. When we got to her room it took a split second to realize the power to her room was off. Every circuit to every piece of equipment was off.We called a Code and Ellen started bagging her (breathing for her with an ambu bag). Carl started CPR when he found no pulse (no DNR in place yet) and I went and checked the circuit breakers and called engineering stat. All of her breakers had tripped. I was afraid to reset them so I waited for the engineer to do it.Once the breakers were reset the monitor showed asystole (no heart beat). The physician running the code called it off after 20 mins. No one could tell him how long she was not ventilated because of the distraction Al presented.We called her attending and he came right in, at 10pm. We told him what happened and he asked the question, “What do we tell the family?” Without hesitation we said, “the truth.” As the nurse in charge I went with the doc and we explained to the family exactly what happened. Ellen was distraught and couldn’t face them, she had gotten close to this family and needed time to come to grips with what had happened.Then the family said something no-one expected. They said, “Thank you God, you made the decision for us.”That room was closed until the chief engineer had it checked out the next day, nothing was found wrong to have tripped those circuit breakers. The hand of God? Who knows? But I sure hoped so.