Breathing Easy, the most vital of signs.

Vital sign measurement is something we do regularly. In an acute facility it's something we do multiple times in a shift. Regular vital signs monitoring assist in tracking patient improvement, or worse - deterioration.
It's been identified that in most cases of Cardiac or Respiratory arrest, and other episodes of patient deterioration, predictors will be present up to 24 hours prior to the event.[1,2]

Saturation infatuation

I'm going to prefix this post with a complaint. One of the biggest annoyances in my professional life is the misnomer that is the term 'O2 stats'.

It's sats. As in saturation. Not status.

Measurement of Oxygen Saturation or SpO2  is an extremely common assessment that is now performed routinely by nurses, doctors and paramedics. SpO2 is indicative of effectiveness of respiration by quantifying perfusion. Essentially this devices spits out a percentage that tells us how on average at what oxygen carrying capacity our red blood cells are.
That's great, but what does this 'oxygen saturation' mean to us? and how can this number really be  used effectively?

We're going to explore the sat, it's meaning, it's use and really get intimate with the nuances that is oximetry.

Brace Yourself.

Spinal immobilisation is a hot topic in the world of trauma and prehospital care at the moment. 

Historically spinal immobilisation (Spinal Motion Restriction, as it's now called) has been one of the main priorities in managing a trauma patient. I mean, we prioritise c-spine along side 'Airway' if you follow the ABCDE assessment algorithm [1,2].