AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Patient safety is a fundamental concern in any health care organization, and early detection of any clinical deterioration is of paramount importance whether the patient is in the emergency department or on the hospital floor. This approach is being abandoned due to the unintended opioid crisis that the country is currently facing. In the past, some health care systems in the United States had used "pain as the fifth vital sign'. The inclusion of smoking status has the premise that the patient will be provided counseling by the provider on quitting smoking. Pulse oximetry sometimes helps to clarify the patient's physiological functions, which would sometimes be unclear by checking just the traditional vital signs. Even though there are a variety of parameters that may be useful along with the traditional four vital sign parameters, studies have only found pulse oximetry and smoking status to have significance in patient outcomes. Traditionally, the vital signs consist of temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. The degree of vital sign abnormalities may also predict the long-term patient health outcomes, return emergency department visits, and frequency of readmission to hospitals, and utilization of healthcare resources. If we use a triage method where we select patients without determining their vital signs, it may not give us a reflection of the urgency of the patient's presentation. Healthcare providers must understand the various physiologic and pathologic processes affecting these sets of measurements and their proper interpretation. Triage of patients in an urgent/prompt care or an emergency department is based on their vital signs as it tells the physician the degree of derangement that is happening from the baseline. The first set of clinical examinations is an evaluation of the vital signs of the patient. They have the name "vital" as their measurement and assessment is the critical first step for any clinical evaluation. Vital signs are an objective measurement of the essential physiological functions of a living organism.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |