IT IS A FACT that a small percentage of the people who suffer cardiac and respiratory arrest can be revived and, of these, a smaller percentage can live a normal life span. The key to successful resuscitation is appropriate treatment instituted within one hundred and eighty seconds of respiratory or cardiac failure. This is only possible if there are always personnel in the vicinity of the patient who are trained and practised in the art of resuscitation. Up to this date the nurses have always been near the patient. The Resuscitation Training Programme for nurses at the Scarborough General Hospital is administered by and is the responsibility of the Nursing Inservice Education Department. The programme is directed and the lectures and examination are conducted by the doctors in the Department of Anaesthesia, with the assistance of the Department of Medicine. The director of nurses must appoint one nurse to be in charge of the training programme; the success of the entire course and the preservation of patients' lives depend upon her personal qualities. She must be an enthusiastic enthusiast, a self-starter with a pleasant personality, because the main part of her job is dealing with people. She must realize that the role of the nursing staff is to initiate immediate emergency resuscitative procedures and to assist the physicians who have answered the emergency call. At the Scarborough General Hospital we conduct our Course for the Resuscitation Teaching Team nurses twice each year. The course consists of a series of lectures, demonstrations, and films, and graduates twenty nurses who are highly trained in the art of emergency resuscitation. This team then circulates through the hospital and teaches the other nurses. At some time during the lectures, the nurses must be made aware of the fact that this system of cardiopulmonary resuscitation is traumatic to the patient. There is a possibility that the resuscitative procedure in inexperienced hands might be the final blow which takes the life of a very sick patient. This type of resuscitation works best in patients whose cardiopulmonary system is not too greatly diseased. It certainly is not recommended in frail older people and those whose cardiac arrest is related to long-term or terminal disease. The final decision with regard to initiation or continuance of this treatment should rest with a qualified physician. The object of this programme is to make every registered nurse who works at Searborough General Hospital sufficiently aware of cardiac or respiratory arrest that she will be mentally prepared to institute immediate adequate resuscitative
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Sep 1, 2010
Open Access