dr-exmedic.com

On a recent Emergency Medicine rotation, I had the opportunity to use a monitor/defibrillator I’d never used before, an older model with hero paddles attached instead of the hands-free.  I discovered that switching from paddles to pacer pads was less than intuitive, since it involved disassembling the cable.  Problems with defibrillator design aren’t limited to any given manufacturer; witness this study, in which medics familiar with the devices involved managed to defibrillate half of the patients they intended to cardiovert.

(I really shouldn’t even get started on this one, which is thankfully being discontinued.  Among other problems, its single battery fell out too readily, and adding the nylon wrap with pockets covered up the shock button.)

More recently, Danish investigators found that some junior internal medicine docs managed to accidentally turn off a Lifepak 12 when they intended to deliver a shock.  It isn’t hard; the buttons are close to each other, and the LP12 will turn off with a single push of the button, unlike (as the authors note) my cell phone (which requires that the off button be held down for a couple seconds).

I’d never really considered this a problem before, but that’s because I was a full-time medic, and became familiar with my monitors by having to check them out at the beginning of every shift:  10+ times a month, every month.  Since not everyone in volunteer-land gets that experience with the equipment, I wonder if the new Lifepak 15 has managed to correct this potential problem.  They seem to have corrected several other ones.

Filed under: EMS Research