big red.
By impactEDnurse • Dec 11th, 2006 • Category: reflective practice.
One moment he is asking you for some iced water, the next, he makes a funny noise mid sentence and slumps back into the bed. His eyes roll upward and his prognosis rolls downward.
In an instant your adrenal glands dump a zillion exclamation marks into your bloodstream. Your sphincter goes slack and your oro-pharynx is obstructed by your heart as it tries to leap out your mouth to escape the drainage.
But even before your brain begins to fathom which particular medical calamity has befallen your patient, your hand is reaching for it. The Big Red Button.
Hit it, and the usual noise of the ED is replaced by a loud demanding klaxon.
The Big Red Button will bring a formidable scramble of expertise to your assistance.
For a brief moment in time it unifies us all, no matter the religion, rank or rating, to work together for greater good. It brings us all in close. It makes us listen. And it demonstrates to us that the important things in life are not things.
The Big Red Button shows us that the sum of us is far far greater than the one of us.
The world needs more Big Red Buttons.
impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital.
All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
Email this author | All posts by impactEDnurse
Two paragraphs.
One great post!
Individuals all mesh together with one goal.
Saving a life.
Nursing rocks!
We need a “big red button”… We don’t have one..
Usually, we can get the same response with a slightly elevated voice and, “I need some help in here”…
It still is a great feeling to see everyone come together to help…
The poetic buddhist….
Great analogy!
Sunday nearly time to go home.
Phone call, ambulance coming in with a near arrest.
Set up and check equipment, empty out the ED as ours is less than half the size of the resus room at TCH.
Waiting, waiting mean while the waiting room gets fuller and fuller.
Call the Dr on call and tell him to forget lunch and get his butt down here fast.
Time stretches, what is coming, how bad is it?
Asystolic arrest.
CPR, tube, damm someone put different laryngoscopes in the resus trolly, adrenaline. Bag, suction, CPR,
We have rythmn and output, stop CPR.
Rythmn not sustained, begin CPR again.
This one did not end well.
Cool post!
We had one of our “frequent flyers” in the other day who pushed the nurse call button continually and demanded attention for 3 1/2 hrs. As you would expect the novelty of this wore off rather quickly.
We had a blue team pow-wow and decided that it was safe to remove the buzzer from the wall as the patient was constantly under visual surveillance, and, being so vocal we would know what was going on with him at all times.
So we discretely removed the buzzer from the wall and left the hand piece with the patient. He continued to push the nurse call button with nil effect. All was quiet for 5 minutes.
Cheeky bastard pushed the Big Red Button.
Nobody thought it was funny.
Our call lights go off continuously if unplugged, but we pretty much ignore them anyway, or at least until the unit clerks start paging overhead for someone to check it. The noise from call buttons is just part of the background.
I hit the Big Red Button yesterday when a patient went into seizure, the 2nd one in the last 20 minutes.
[...] I have previously stated that the world needs more big red buttons…..but now Im not so sure. [...]