Natalie May continues her reflections on a year with Sydney HEMS, focusing on paediatric retrieval, drowning and airway care. These personal clinical lessons explore equipment, communication and the compromises involved in delivering critical care outside the hospital.
101 Reflective Lessons from a Year with Sydney HEMS. Part Four: More Clinical Read More
Whose assessment counts when a child is in pain? This 2017 appraisal of paediatric pain scales examines agreement between children, nurses and doctors, questioning whether disagreement justifies dismissing children’s reports and what a single pain measurement can really tell us.
JC: Pain Scales in the Paediatric ED Read More
Do teaching hospitals deliver better outcomes? This 2017 appraisal examines a large US study linking teaching status with lower mortality, while exploring confounding, limits to generalisability and why the association does not show that teaching itself caused the difference.
JC: Those who can, do; those who teach, do better. St.Emlyn’s Read More
A 2017 ResusFriday session uses simulation and shared learning to examine cardiac arrest care, including team roles, reversible causes and dual-axis defibrillation. The post explains why enthusiasm for the latter needed to be tempered by the limited evidence available then.
Dual Axis Defibrillation & #ResusFriday at St.Emlyn’s Read More
What happens beyond initial survival after cardiac arrest? This 2017 review of Danish registry data explores associations between bystander CPR or defibrillation and longer-term outcomes, emphasising that the analysis concerns 30-day survivors and cannot establish causation on its own.
JC: Bystanders make the difference in cardiac arrest. St.Emlyn’s Read More
Preparing a critically ill patient for transfer brings challenges that can be less obvious at the bedside. In this third Sydney HEMS reflection, Natalie May explores sedation, ventilation, physiological preparation and contingency planning through lessons from interhospital retrievals.
101 Reflective Lessons from a Year with Sydney HEMS. Part Three: Clinical Read More
Can procalcitonin reliably guide antibiotic decisions in the emergency department? This 2017 review traces the biomarker’s evidence across adults, children and intensive care, explaining why different populations, study questions and uncertain effects on outcomes complicate apparently promising results.
Are you PROcalcitonin? St.Emlyn’s goes bug-hunting. Read More
Could a simple cold-water stimulation technique shorten the wait for an infant’s urine sample? This 2017 appraisal of Quick-Wee examines the randomised trial, collection success, uncertain contamination findings and the practical challenge of providing uninterrupted attention in a busy ED.
JC: The Quick-Wee Method for Faster Clean Catch Urine Collection Read More
