I'm tempted to create one for anesthesiologists (I'm a retired [38 years of practice] neurosurgical anesthesiologist — I certainly have the time! But I'm too lazy.
Please do one. Even if short. I'd love to read it. I'm a industrial engineer researching healthcare systems. I'm firmly of the opinion that people with decades of experience have truly valuable knowledge locked within. Even a small list would probably delight many here, me for certain at least.
Note: I published it to my blog using a date in the past because it was the fastest, easiest way to create a permalink to use here. I did indeed just create the list (and subsequent post) in response to the comments preceding it. In case you were wondering...
>>The first thing to do upon arriving at a Code Blue is to take your own pulse.
Can you expand on this item, please? I interpret it as "don't just arrive and immediately begin taking action, but take a moment to fully assess the situation because an extra 15 seconds is a worthwhile cost to avoid a mistake". Curious to know if I'm on track.
Also, when I was in hospital (diverticular disease) they put the first IV in my non-dominant arm (at elbow), then the second in my dominant arm .. the second one ended up staying in much longer. I wonder how often that happens; whether in some areas [ER?] it might be sufficiently often to warrant reversing the rule-of-thumb?
Re: #7: it's true! Why in the hand? Because if you put it in the antecubital fossa, you force the patient to keep their arm straight so as not to cause the IV to infiltrate by bending the elbow — this effectively makes the arm unusable. By putting the IV in the back of the hand, you enable full use of that arm. In regards to your hospital experience with the two IVs you had: it's impossible to predict how long an IV will remain functional. In regards to which side to place the IV, in the ER you can omit this nicety: as we/they say, "any port in a storm."
It was always a hit and miss with IVs for me. Sometimes they installed it perfectly, other times it started hurting within an hour. I guess it also highly depended on the nurse - some also had a lot of trouble taking my blood, others consistently got it done within 15 seconds.
I was never asked about hand dominance so during surgery they actually put the IV in my dominant hand and hit a nerve. I couldn't use my dominant hand for a month.
