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A P R I L 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
way. But hoping isn't enough. I want to be prepared, and I want my
team to be prepared. After all, those who fail to prepare — and who
end up having to live with the consequences — are among the least
fortunate among us.
The next level
Complacency is
Enemy No. 1 when
it comes to prepa-
rations for MH. It
used to be that we
watched an MH
video once a year
and took a test
afterward. I didn't
think that was
enough. A lot of
actions have to be taken when MH strikes, and they have to be done
quickly and correctly. It's asking a lot to expect a group of people who
watched a video 11 months earlier to be able to act as a cohesive unit
during a life-and-death crisis in which every second counts.
So one of the first things I did was add a mock drill to our yearly
training regimen. Nothing in the real world is textbook. You hear about
all the signs and symptoms when MH strikes, but you may not actually
have all the signs — you may only have a couple. It can be confusing.
So I try to throw some curves into the mock drills. Maybe the patient
doesn't have all the generic symptoms. Maybe in the middle of an MH
attack, the patient has a cardiac arrest. Maybe the pharmacy didn't
stock enough dantrolene. What are you going to do in those situations?
The first time we did a drill, we learned some things we couldn't
S U R G I C A L E M E R G E N C I E S
IF MH STRIKES Pre-printed instructions spell out each staff
member's job during an emergency response.
Kristi
Plank,
RN,
BSN
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