For years I never even considered the inventory of ventilators in my hospital. The issue arose with the advent of this phony baloney pandemic. Recall that every Patient who came into our hospital was automatically presumed to be ‘Covid positive,’ every single one.
If you walked into the ER with a thumb fracture, you were presumed to be Covid +.
Anyone who was in any sort of respiratory distress was immediately sedated, intubated, and ventilated. This policy resulted in just about everyone realizing just how many ventilators we actually had. I do not recall the actual number, but I think that we had about 60 or so. Sixty was always plenty, until this BS started.
In short order we were in jeopardy of exhausting our available vents. The solution was simple, but it taught me things that I had not previously considered. The hospital had an entirely separate inventory of vents which were referred to as ‘Anesthesia Ventilators.’ Now a vent is a vent. They all do the same stuff. Some are big, some are small, but they either have a bellows or a turbine. The Anesthesia Vents were cool. They were big with a lot more buttons and dials and stuff. Those bells and whistles were very fun to play with. Essentially however, same stuff.
The distinction was that none or few of us ever had an ‘in service’ on them. ‘In Service’ means that there was individual training involved. We never got that. No matter, as above, we are trained. We are experts and no buttons will intimidate us. We just plod on. I loved the new, bigger vents, with all of those extra buttons to play with. So suddenly, we have a ton of new vents. Yay. I was cool with it all. Prior,I had not realized that those Surgeons knew all of my shit. They did though. I had nice yaks with several of them. I certainly did miss my true vocation, but I say, better late than never.
More later if there is interest.
No Katz jest this
They did though. I had nice yaks with several of them. I certainly did miss my true vocation, but I say, better late than never.
More later if there is interest.
~~~~~~~~~
Yeas pleez. I find your work life snippets interesting.
I had never thought it could be that bad. I'd be interested in learning more.
When I had covid in Jan and then my appendix tried to kill me, it was.. well the whole thing was a bit unreal. First the morphine dreams, then I got Nurse Ratchet with 4 masks on who didn’t want to come in my room.
But when I came out of anesthesia, not only did I have an oxygen mask on, but a covid mask on top of that. I laughed. I did. It was ridiculous since they were all triple and quadruple masked themselves, gloves, and gowned as well. But good thing they put a covid mask on me.
I know it’s not the same thing. I was just sharing lol.
I know first hand. I went to the ER in 2020 with a fever of unknown origin (FUO). In the elderly that usually meant to be checked for sepsis. Instead they started talking CoViD; I objected that I was free of any respiratory symptoms.
No matter; they put me in extreme isolation for about three days then finally moved me to a med/surg unit to pursue the fever - which had spontaneously abated. At least I got some rest. 😌