The Alphabet (Part 1)

I know, I know. This has now become a habit of mine to post every other Monday. I really don’t know what’s up with my schedule because it so happens that there are some Mondays that I’m quite busy that I’m not able to do a blog post about anything. Sorry about that.

Anyway, hello there my dearest RANTers!

How is everyone doing so far in this year? I’m hoping it’s quite as good as mine.

So, let’s stop beating (Oooh!!! Me likey!) around the bush and get on with RANTing.

The reason why I wasn’t able to RANT about anything last week was because I was attending this seminar…

…for four consecutive days. And the resource speaker of that seminar is none other than Dr. DaiWai M. Olson, RN, CCRN.

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But I did not attend it without learning something new (What the hell did I attend it for I didn’t?). And yes, I did learn about the alphabet just like when we were kids but this time each letter has been given a meaning.

During my nursing student days, we were taught that the nursing priorities for a patient inside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are always the ABC; Airway, Breathing, Circulation. But during the session with Dr. Olson, he taught us more than these.

Airway

As a nurse or a health professional caring for a patient inside the ICU, the airway is the very first thing that we need to asses. We need to check the patient’s external respiratory anatomy first to see if the patient doesn’t have any difficulty in breathing or if the patient’s airway is not clogged or blocked. If that is the case, then our priority is to clear the airway of that.

Breathing

Then next is the breathing pattern of the patient. For the adult, the normal respiratory cycles (It’s the inhale-exhale cycle, dearie.) per minute ranges from twelve to twenty. If the respiratory cycle of the patient is less than or more than that of that normal range, then we need to check again the airway of the patient if it’s clear.

Circulation

This talks about the circulation of the blood in the patient. The normal range of heartbeats in a minute in an adult is sixty to one hundred heartbeats. So if the heartbeats in a minute of the patient is less than or more than that range, we need to assess what is causing it.

Disability

Is the patient able to move him/herself in the bed or is he totally bed-ridden? The state of the patient every hour could change. He could possibly be able to move himself from side to side during last shift but isn’t able to do so now in your shift (I think maybe he/she is just asleep.). This is wherein we need to check the neurological status (What a nerdy-nerd word.) of the patient.

Expose

Art owned by David Kawena

Just because the word is “expose” doesn’t mean you should be exposing the patient’s profile and data to the whole word (Who would even dare do that? I know I won’t.). It only means that you need to expose the patient’s body (Don’t even think of THAT part.) or rather loosen the patient’s clothing to make him/her more comfortable. You wouldn’t want to strangle your patient now, would you?

Fahrenheit

This actually refers to the body temperature of the patient you’re handling. Just because the word is “Fahrenheit”, it doesn’t mean that you need to convert the unit of measurement from Celsius to Fahrenheit every single time you asses your patient’s body temperature (I know most of you don’t like Mathematics.).

Gadgets

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Oooh! I know that look. The first thing that came into your mind are the touch screen gadgets you use for browsing your social media accounts or for playing that Flappy Bird game, right (Admit it.)? Actually, this means checking the readings of each machine/gadget that are attached to your patient. Also, check if each machine/gadget is working P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y. Your patient’s life could be depending on it.

History/Head-To-Toe Assessment

Assessments. Assessments. Never-ending ASSessments (Oops!). Of course, as nurses we need to assess our patient’s status every single time. And since the setting is in the ICU, we really need to check the patient cephalocaudally (NOSE BLEED.) every single S-H-I-F-T (This has an “f”, dear. Don’t think of the other word.).

Also, going back or refreshing our minds on what happened before the patient was admitted to the ICU is a M-U-S-T. It’s a way of telling ourselves on what to do with the patient during our shift.

Okay. I will be stopping here for the mean time because I know I am now dragging you to Dream Land (And I sure don’t want to bore you guys to death.). Rest assured, I’ll be RANTing more on this little alphabet I’ve learned on my next blog post.