ECMO

Talk about a scary situation....walking into a room when there is a patient on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation).  For those of you who do not know what this is:  it is a pump that circulates blood through an artificial lung and back into the body for a very ill patient whose heart or lungs cannot adequately work.

My preceptor last month took me into a patients room to see this going on.  A baby, surrounded by machines, lines, drips, and the most patient, smart medical staff there was.

I learned so much from the situations encountered with this patient.  The nurse that was taking care of the baby when I went in was so composed and confident.  I was ready to crap my pants from everything that was going on.  How do you keep it all straight?  A patients body cannot keep them alive so you are relying on these machines to keep them alive.  What if something goes wrong with the machines?

Oh, yep. That happened too, on a daily basis.  Every time there would be clots in this machine and they would have to change the "artificial lung" out the patient could not withstand being taken off the machine for the switch.  Their heart would stop, CPR would begin, drugs would be given.  It took a lot of the staff to help code this patient everyday to keep them alive.

This is where I learned teamwork no matter what your experience is.
For a new person in the ICU, I was even valuable at times (I had to go get a code form so they could write everything down).  Yeah,  I know it does not seem valuable, but I took in the information.  In years to come, it will help me keep a patient alive.

Anticipation is key in these sick patients.  When you anticipate what could go wrong, you are prepared and usually prevent the escalation.