It Is Serious! - Visiting Intensive Care Units By James Brown At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Yes ! It is serious, Any visit to the intensive care unit should be taken as being serious. What are all those machines and monitors hooked up to him.

The intensive care unit has many pieces of life saving equipment and monitors. Below is a list of some of the equipment.

1. Patient monitoring

2. Cardiac monitoring

3. Respiratory devices

4. Pain management

5. Resuscitation equipment for emergencies

Seriously injured patients that require life support equipment it is available. If a life threatening or critical illness occurs the intensive care has all the necessary equipment. If you need 24 hour monitoring after surgery , intensive care is there to help.

Patient Monitoring:

Patient monitoring is continuously . The physiologic monitoring provides and displays many parameter that are applied to the critical patient. They are responsible for monitoring the activity of the heart ; breathing rate; blood pressure of the patient; cardiac output ; and the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood.. Each bed in the intensive care unit has physiologic monitoring to measure the above body activities. This information can be viewed from the central nursing station.

Pulse oximeter-is to monitor oxygen level in the patients blood . This device is placed on the finger of the patient.

Intracranial pressure monitor- measures fluid pressure in the brain ,when a patient suffers from head trauma or other brain conditions such as a tumor ;hemorrhage; or edema. Elevated levels are recorded and sets off an elevated alert for the nurse's immediate attention.

Apena Monitor- is used to monitoring the breathing habit of the patient. Respiratory failure and cessation breathing in infants will set off an alarm when a certain amount of time passes and the patient has gone without breathing

Life saving devices include the :

1. Ventilator also known as a respirator. The ventilator is for patients that can't breathe on their own. It is equipped with an alarm.

2. Infusion pump- used to deliver fluids by IV or by epidural through a catheter. The infusion pump is located beside the patients bed on an intravenous pole. This monitors and continuously delivers medicines; blood; and anesthesia to the patient.

Crash Cart- resuscitation cart or code cart. All emergency equipment is located on this cart. The heart defibrillator and airway tubing is located within a reach. The cart is equipped for whatever a critical patient may encounter including having to be resuscitated. or cardio respiratory failure.

In many cases x-rays are performed by bedside. This can be performed by the mobile x-ray unit. Portable lab devices are available for quick diagnosis by the bedside. All that is needed is a small amount of the patient's blood.

Intensive care requires a lot of high tech equipment for the critical patients.

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