Vital signs... what to say about vital signs? Well, originally I was scared to death to have vital my vital signs taken (because of several bad experiences I have had, not to mention that having my arm go numb is like having a migraine). However, after practicing on others and after being practiced on I actually had a good time doing it. Not only can I take vital signs now, but I don't mind having vital signs taken on me. I actually liked it so much I plan on practicing on my parents today when Launce and I go up to visit them today. Hopefully they don't read my blog before Launce and I go up today... I want to work on unsuspecting victims... I mean patients.
I wondered how nurses manually took blood pressures and how they figured it out with the cuff and stethescope and I have learned how it is done. I was most surprised that the cuff actually cuts off the blood flow to the arm (that sounded dangerous to me at first until I understood the whole process). The first beat that is heard is the systolic and the last beat that is heard is the diastolic. When my blood pressure was taken I was around 105/60. I am surprised that my blood pressure is so low. I used to be 120/80, but apparently my running has helped out. Sweet!
We also learned how to feel/count the pulse and that don't ever use your thumb or else you may get a false pulse from your own thumb. You also do not take your fingers off of the patient's pulse when you begin to count respirations because if the patient knows that you are taking respirations they probably will not continue to breath normally. I had an especially hard time with this when I knew that someone was watching me breathe.
Well, I guess I will wrap up my unusally long blog by saying that we still have an hour and we're pretty much done for the day already.
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