Drugs

On simple research and the gift of sharing…

A nice little paper caught my eye in this months Emergency Medicine Australasia.  Entitled “Review of therapeutic agents employed by an Australian aeromedical prehospital and retrieval service” this is a really simple paper; basically an audit of the medications carried and used over a 12 month period by the Sydney HEMS service. There’s a fair chance …

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Big Syringe, Little Syringe

Safety is paramount in anaesthesia, wherever it is being performed (in theatre, in ED or at the roadside). Many of the non-anaesthetists joke about the apparent simplicity of induction agents in an RSI, without appreciating the nuances. RSI is easy! inject the big syringe first – induction then the little syringe – paralysis By far the …

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Surviving Sedation Guidelines 2015

Updated format – key points are : – appropriate selection of agent, – use of a validated sedation tool – and managing psych as well as anaesthetic risks For more info, read the KIDocs post ‘Got Droperidol?‘ A handy guide to Psych Sedation is downloadable from SSG2015v6 For more information, see this guideline 140911 – Consensus …

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Got droperidol?

If you’ve been following blogs such as THE PHARM recently, you’ll probably have seen reference to a chap called Minh le Cong and a drug called ketamine.  Now it’s no secret that many in the prehospital and emergency fields are fond of ketamine – it’s a useful dissociative agent with analgesic properties and can be …

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Lessons for management of acute agitation in rural EDs

The South Australian Coroner has just released a report into the sad death of Mr Simos, who died whilst awaiting transfer from a rural ED back to a tertiary centre where he was under a current detention order. The Coroners report can be accessed here. As with all Coroner’s reports, it makes for salutary reading and …

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