Open Airways: Stories from the back of the ambulance
RSI Without Sedative
“They opted to use the rapid sequence intubation protocol to knock him down and intubate him, however after they had knocked him down with a paralytic they neglected to give him a sedative…” Click to hear the rest from Will Krost.
Open Airways is a project to capture an oral history for the benefit of the EMS Community. EMS responders share some of the most meaningful cases of their careers, sometimes with humor and always with compassion. We hope that they will help us improve your practice and inspire a new generation of caregivers.
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All RSI protocols should include SEDATION before PARALYTICS. Also, don’t forget that if pain is involved, sedatives such as etomidate do not provide any analgesia, and you will also need to give analgesia as part of your RSI in trauma cases.
I have developed a Portable medical storage device as a Flash drive. Do most EMS vehicles have windows computers? Would they use it to open my medical history?
Any reply would be appreciated.
papadavid1@verizon.net
If you call 911 for a medical emergency you may get a crew that has the capability to read a flash drive (either with an vehicle onboard computer or laptop or a crewmember’s personal laptop, but if it were a true emergency, we are not going to have time to try to read a flash drive especially from someone we do not know (computer viruses etc).
If you want another way to pass on your medical history to the crew besides verbally, print it out and carry it with you taped to your ID.
The most important thing that I can think of that no one has any way of assessing for is: Are you allergic to any medications?
Regards,
John
Tad-
I appreciate and completely agree with your comments. If you listen to the podcast, you will note that I do suggest that sedation is necessary PRIOR TO paralytic administration administration. Thanks for taking the time to listen to the podcast and comment.
Respectfully,
Will Krost
Pretty cool will. I think of you and your family often. No need to mention regrets ect… I just wanted to tell you that I do miss and love my brother.
oh the email that I gave you is missing the 75 before the @. I’m taking sign language by the way; just thought about that because you said you were teaching your kids some signing.