On Wednesday, February 27 2008, the UNM Wilderness Medicine course participants tested out the commonly accepted, tried and true ideas that are taught in many wilderness medicine courses. Problem is, most classes are in auditoriums of over 400 people, with a keynote speaker in the front. We found many of the ideas to work, but not as well as you would think. We devised ideas that are not normally taught in wilderness settings. Paul Romo is demonstrating yet another use for a foley...as a stethoscope! A good friend, Ken Iserson, gave me this idea with the baby nipple, and we thought of the foley. By the way, Ken will have a great book about MacGuyver medicine coming out this year-a tome that will pique the interest of the wilderness medicine or international medicine traveler alike. At any rate, the usual improvised airway control ideas were taught in our lab today, but the a question comes up...how do you improvise on the BVM?
Dario
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1 comment:
Excellent question. How to improvise the Bag-Valve-Mask, a bulky, awkward medical device if there ever was one. Maybe somebody can come up with something made out of a 2-liter bottle. A couple of points to be made. Using BVM effectively is a difficult skill. The majority of medically trained personnel use the BVM ineffectively to begin with. Also, most studies of resuscitation have demonstrated that rescue breaths don't improve survival in CPR! Some recent work suggests that CPR should include fewer breaths and more compressions than even the most recent ACLS guidelines. So maybe we should scratch the BVM altogether from our medical kit. We can always use our lungs if need be - with the appropriately improvised one-way facemask to deliver breaths!
Food for thought.
JA
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