How to check vital signs

Before beginning to take a patient’s vital signs collect the equipment needed:

• A watch with a seconds hand or a stop watch
• A thermometer
• Thermometer covers
• A stethoscope
• A sphygmomanometer
• Alcohol wipes
• A pain scale

There are five vital signs; pulse, respirations, temperature, blood pressure, and pain. When trying to find a patient’s vital signs different measuring devices are used. Before beginning the procedure tell the patient your name, make sure the patient is the correct one, explain the procedures, wash your hands, make sure the equipment is disinfected with the alcohol wipes, and make sure the patient is comfortable.

First, we are going to take pulse. When taking a patients pulse you have to keep in mind that 60-90 beats per minute is the normal range and if you get a number lower or higher than this you may want to retake it or have someone else take it, at least until you are confident in your work. There are 8 pulse sites on the human body temporal, apical, carotid, brachial, radial, femoral, popliteal, and pedial. Pulse sites are the places where health care professionals take pulse on patients.  We are going to focus on taking a radial pulse because this is commonly used in adult care. To find a patient’s radial pulse turn their arm palm so that the palm is up. Next, follow their thumb down past their wrist. There will be a indent in their arm, you can find the radial pulse there, if not very close to there. It was important to remember that if you push on the artery too hard you will not be able to feel the pulse. Also, use the tip of your index and middle finger to feel the pulse, never use your thumb (the thumb has its own pulse and if you use your thumb you may only be able to feel your pulse and not the patients). Once you find the patients pulse, the simplest way to measure it is to count the beats for one full minute, or you can take the pulse for 30 seconds and multiply the amount by two. When I took my volunteer patient’s pulse i took it for one full minute and the beats per minute was 70.

When taking pulse you should try to take respirations at the same time. Also, you should not tell the person that your going to watch them breathe, this is because if you tell them this they will regulate their breathing and they wont be breathing normally. Respirations are also timed for a minute or any variation of a minute, as long as it would be equivalent to the amount you would get with 60 seconds. The range for normal respirations is between 12 and 20 breaths per minute.Each time the patients chest rises and falls again (inhale+exhale=1) that counts as 1. My volunteer patient’s respiration rate was 15 breaths per minute.

To take temperature, make sure the thermometer  is clean. Do this by taking an alcohol wipe and cleaning the part that goes into the patients mouth. Before putting it into the patients mouth make sure there is a cover on the thermometer. Before the next step, you should ask the patient if they hav had any hot or cold beverages or food because this could affect the outcome. Next, stick the thermometer under the patients tongue. There are many different types of thermometers, Most of them are automatic, press a button and make sure the thermometer is on. Then, usually the thermometer will beep when its done. If the thermometer is not automatic you need to read the instructions before using it to see how much time it needs to be left under the tongue for. When the thermometer is finished getting the temperature, put on gloves and take the thermometer out of the patients mouth. next, read off the temperature and dispose of the cover in a garbage can. Then, wipe the thermometer with another alcohol wipe and then throw your gloves away. When I took my volunteer patient’s temperature it was 98.4 degrees farenheit.

When taking a patient’s blood pressure you need a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure apparatus ), a stethoscope and some alcohol wipes. Before beginning you want to make sure that the bell on your stethoscope is disinfected by wiping it with an alcohol wipe. The next step is making sure the blood pressure cuff is the right size for the patient’s arm, if it is not the right size there could be a large difference in the patient’s actual blood pressure and the reading that you’re getting from the gauge. Next, find the patients artery and line up the arrow (on the cuff) with the patients artery. Then, Put your stethoscope over the spot where you felt the artery. After that put the stethoscope into your ears, clse the bulb and begin pumping. If you immediately hear a thudding noise you need to fill up the cuff more before gauging the blood pressure. Once you start to hear the thudding remember what number the gauge is on. Once you stop hearing the thudding or when there is a great change in volume of the thudding remember the number on the gauge again. these two numbers are the systolic and diastolic boold pressures (systolic is on top and diastolic is on the bottom). The first number you remembered is the systolic and should be between 100 and 120. The second number you remembered is the diastolic and should be between 60 and 80. Our patient’s blood pressure was 108/72 which is within normal limits. Just remember that on mechanical gauges the scale goes in incriments of 2.

Last, I checked the pain of the patient. Pain is completely subjective so it is difficult to measure. This is why we use pain scales to try to get an accurate reading of the patient’s pain. Pain became a vital sign only recently because today we know that it is important to manage a patients pain. Make sure you explain the pain scale to the patient, even though they’re easy to use, someone may have never seen it before. Explain that the number zero is the absence of pain and that the number ten is the worst pain they have ever felt. When i asked the patient his level of pain he said zero, which is it good, because people are not normally supposed to have pain. A common pain scale to use is the faces pain scale, there are other pain scales that work effectively too though.

The Monster it Makes and the Man it Takes

You drink it.

You drown in it.

You frown and get angry.

The love you had that died is the reason and your family is the expense.

She loves you so she can’t leave you.

Even though she wants too.

Misery flows out of you and infects those around.

Just leave the dead in the ground.

I forgive you, I always do.

But, can you forgive you too?

We know the man who used to be.

When your sober we get a chance to see.

After the first sip the transformation begins.

The monster is released from its cage and its out for a grin.

The pain it causes me, I get so sad.

Afterward I can’t help but be mad.

I know about the girl you love when you were sixteen.

And I know that alcohol was your friend and fiend.

But, you need to let it go.

Your family still knows.

Whats best and whats not.

We’re all you’ve got.

You’ve let me down time after time.

Your heart is crushed and so is mine.

Each time you lose your mind.

Your soul is suppressed and it’s one of a kind.

You’ve left your love so far behind.

How could you be so blind?

To ignore your life fading away.

And it makes me say,

“Why do I stay?”

Maybe I need to get away.

Sydney A. Brown

The sun rises on another day of pain.

You take some more percocet and the pain slowly fades.

I look into your eyes and I see the good times.

I miss the good times, the past, the days back when you were taking care of me and my only responsibility was taking care of Barbies.

Now the times have changed and so have we.

I see the struggle you go through everyday and I try to help.

But it doesn’t matter, the next day brings more confusion and anguish.

I do all I can, but the dementia has already taken over.

I’m surprised that you remember me so well.

You try to convince me that your fine everytime I ask, but I know the truth.

You hardly sleep and your ready to leave this world.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you have your blood pumped into a machine so it can be cleaned.

You don’t understand what’s happening and you don’t know why we put you through this pain.

If you could understand the way we feel maybe it would be easier.

We’re not ready to let you go yet, and you don’t realize

that I’m suffering with you, but I can’t let you go.

I’ve watched you slowly die for many years now, and I know that life is temporary.

But for some reason I still cannot picture a life without you.

I’ve seen death’s hand casting it’s shadow on you for so long that you’d think that I would be numb to the grief.

It’s only begining

I’ll never forget you, so you’ll live forever in my heart.

I know that I can’t save the world, but I’ll never forgive myself for not being able to save you.

Comatose

Comatose

Written by: Monique Piquette

English 101.034

            The Darkness is black and unearthly cold. It makes the hairs stand straight up on the back of your neck. The Darkness is everything twisted about you, everything awful and grotesque about the world, and everything terrifying about life as we know it. The Darkness is the essence of fear, sadness, anger, suffering, paranoia, rage, anxiety, and so much more. It is so unfathomable until it has you in its grasp, the grasp that no one can ever escape.

Somehow, the Darkness is everywhere and nowhere at all. It’s always with you. Sometimes it is just hiding in the deepest, farthest parts of your mind. Even if you can’t see it, it’s there; waiting for the right moment. You can’t get away from your thoughts, so there is no use running. The Darkness has a voice. You can hear it sometimes coming from the back of your mind. It torments and tantalizes you. It tries to trick you and draw you nearer to it, close enough so that it has you in its grip, but I know better. I know to stay away.

It’s after me. It’s the predator and I’m the prey, and I know that this beast always catches its meal. It’ll rip me limb from limb, and tear my soul to shreds if I let it catch up to me. I run. It feels like I’ve been running forever, but I can’t stop, not now.

I finally make it to a road. I look down the road to the right, and there is nothing, no signs of life. Then, I turn my head and look to the left, I see a town. I can feel it behind me, the Darkness is still after me, and it’s as if I can feel it breathing down my neck. Unfortunately, there is no time to reset. I begin to run towards the town on the left to see if I can get help.

I come to a four-way intersection in, what seems to be, the center of the town. There are street signs with no words, and people standing around looking down, as if they’re bowing their heads in shame. I can feel the Darkness’s presence once again. I start to scream for help. No one even flinches. I run over to one and grab him; he doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. Frantically, I begin to shake him violently and scream louder. I start to panic. I can feel my bounding heart beat and an immense pain in my chest. I run to different ones screaming, “Help!” I get louder with each individual and I shake each of them more vigorously than the last. I scream, “What is wrong with you people?” For a moment I black out.

When I open my eyes I’m lying in the center of the intersection, this is not where I was standing when I lost consciousness. They are all surrounding me. It hadn’t been too dark to see, but if the street lights flicker on I would’ve never discovered what I wished to know all along, or at least before I chose to run to the left.

The beings surrounding me have the shape of humans; they seemed to be just like everyone else. The only issues were that their faces were non-existent. It was as if someone took an eraser to the area of their heads were those key human features are supposed to be situated.

I can feel them staring at me. Not necessarily at me, but through me and through my soul. They were judging me, deciding my fate, as if, they were the jury, the Darkness was an executioner, and I had broken some unspeakable law. I know that they are collaborating with it. They belong to the Darkness.

Fear overwhelms me. My mind tells me to run, but I am frozen stiff. Paralyzed by the Darkness, the stares, and not knowing what is going to become of me. One reaches out to grab me. He desires to grab me for it. I can feel the adrenaline that my body is pumping through my veins. Fight or flight? Those are the only two options.

As I scramble onto my feet there is no time for thought, no time to flip a coin, no time to decide. I can only go by what my instincts are telling me to do. I ran, sprinted. I’m too afraid to look behind me. I would’ve taken them all on, so that I could survive, but there was just too many and I don’t have enough time or energy to be foolish. I know it’s still coming for me, and I know what will happen if it succeeds. I wonder how far away I am from it and from home. After all, it was right behind me before I made my way into the town.

I am alone now, besides the Darkness there is no one. I’ve been running into nothingness for what seems to be close to infinity. When I look down, I notice that even the road is gone. There is nothing around me except ground and sky.

I feel like I can’t go any further, but I keep running, I have to. I stumble and fall to the ground. I just lie there. I am too tired to move. Strangely, I don’t feel the Darkness surrounding me anymore. There is almost a feeling of relief. I close my eyes. I out ran it, and now I need to rest.

Suddenly, there is a blinding white light. My eyes have not yet adjusted to the light, and I cannot see anything. Stricken by panic, I start to kick and flail my legs; anything to get leverage so that I can get away. I try to move my arms, but I can’t. On the left, someone is clenching my hand tightly. He won’t let go. I can tell that it’s a man because of the feeling of his hand; the course skin, large size, muscularity, and calluses. I look to the right, I can se a man holding my arm down while a woman prepares a syringe.

They must be the faceless creatures as well. I must not have run fast enough. I feel a pinch; I was injected with some sort of sedative or tranquillizer. Everything begins to go blurry, lines start to fade, and grey erodes to black. I can no longer fight back, or even thrash my legs. Fight or flight, what will happen if I can do neither?

As I slip into unconsciousness, I feel the pitch black closing in around me. It hits me lie a gargantuan wave falling down onto my head. I hope that this is not the end for me. I struggled so hard to get free and I ended up slipping further into darkness. The pitch black engulfs me. I can’t swim to the surface, I can’t even move. All I can do is float helplessly towards the bottom. As it drowns me, it gets into my lungs, and becomes part of me.

When all hope is lost, it washes me ashore. I feel like it’s toying with me, or like it enjoys the chase. I lay there, in the sand, barely breathing and not moving I am too weak. My hand twitches; hope has not yet faded.

I roll myself onto my stomach and attempt to drag myself across the beach. At first, I go nowhere. My body can’t coordinate its movements; all I can do is squirm. After a few minutes my muscles synchronize perfectly. I crawl up to the top nearest dune. My dehydration is taking a toll, it is so hot, and I am so thirsty.

My head starts to throb; it’s the worst pain that I’ve ever felt. The Darkness is seeping into my brain. It wants to control me, change me, and destroy me.  I tried so hard and it still got to me. I need to do something before it takes over. The pain forces me to close my eyes, and I try to bury it.

When I open my eyes, there is a cliff in front of me. It seems to be bottomless. The Darkness is giving me one last option, one last chance to be free. It thinks it can defeat me. My last hope of freeing myself from the Darkness is my biggest fear. I stagger to my feet as my temples pound. It is trying to stop me. I can’t help but tremble as I tread closer to the edge. I look down the cliff and into the abyss and my heart sinks into my chest.

It wants me as a faceless one, as a slave to the Darkness for all eternity, and longer. It wants to bring me pain and suffering every moment of everyday, living the torment over and over again. It’s like a parasite, except, the only way to get rid of it, is to get rid of the host.

No.

I jump, and it’s freeing. I feel the cool wind between my fingertips, and the hair that was sticking to my neck, from sweat, is now blowing past my face. I close my eyes. I feel the soothing warmth of tears swelling underneath my eye lids. There is only nothingness.

I spring up and gasp for air. I jolt up into a sitting position. Now, I open my eyes. I am in a hospital. I finally feel safe, but not because of the building that I am sitting in, and not because of the, “top quality staff” that work here. No, I feel safe because I, once again, feel my left hand being grasped.

I turn and look at the man. I know him well, yet he will never know what I have endeavored. I feel the warm soothing sensation of the tears again. This time they are not hiding behind my closed eye lids, but rolling down my cheeks. I turn to him and he holds me, and I embrace him. In my mind, I wish that this moment would never end, because here there is no darkness, no suffering, and no faceless beings. In his arms there is only light.

For a while, I only hear him breathing. Then, he whispers in my ear, “I’ve missed you so much.” His words carry me back to reality. The world quickly sets in, and the sounds of the hospital become apparent. The act of everyday life has resurfaced, and I am once again apart of the world.

October Snow Downfall

Friday the 28th of October, snow started to fall in the mid-afternoon. The snow was heavy and falling quickly. By eight o’clock that night parts of route 9 coming from Amherst Massachusetts were already blocked off. There were downed power lines and fallen trees everywhere. The power had been turned off so that people did not get hurt and the plow trucks’ drivers were having difficulties doing their jobs. The difficulties were due to them having to maneuver around the trees and power lines that were in the road. On the way to work Saturday morning, October 29th, a plow truck driver asked me for directions. He then told me that he had been trying to get to Belchertown since one o’clock that morning, but he couldn’t get through the narrowed roads. It was about eight o’clock when I had to break the news to him that he wouldn’t be able to keep going in that same direction.
Some people didn’t get their power turned back on until over a week later. People were devastated by what happened. Hospitals became over crowded with people with health issues and it cost people and businesses a large amount of money because they had to throw away products that had spoiled. If electric companies had been more prepared and kept better maintenance of the trees surrounding telephone poles there would not have been as much destruction. There is no excuse for what has happened. Hopefully if we are in a similar situation electric companies will be better prepared and, if needed, recruit help more quickly.

Re view of “Race and Gender in Today’s Hip Hop Culture” guest lecture by Dr. Michael Jeffries Ph.D., Professor of American studies.

Re view of “Race and Gender in Today’s Hip Hop Culture” guest lecture by Dr. Michael Jeffries Ph.D., Professor of American studies.
The lecture had a lot of information that I had never thought of when thinking about the hip hop culture. He had interviewed both Caucasian males and African American males at four different stages of income that were fans of hip hop. He also compared images of hip hop in recent years compared to the earlier years when it was beginning.
While interviewing the men, he noticed a pattern in the answers to specific questions. When asked the question, “what is hip hop?” at first many said something like, “it’s just a way of life”. When they further explained, both races of men talked about it as though it were a possession. The white males talked about how it used to be a black thing and the African American men saying that it is just part of their culture. It seemed as though all of the men were giving someone ownership to hip hop.
In recent years the image of the people working in hip hop has changed. The cover of hip hop cd’s used to be more diverse. It had people of different ethnicities. It also used to show a more care free lifestyle. Now the generic image is a harder looking man, who is physically fit, and it incorporates violence. Back then, there would usually be most if not all of the people that you hear in the tracks on the cover. Now the picture usually focuses on one person.

“Toddlers and Tiaras”: And the Assumptions it Makes

The show “Toddlers and Tiaras” has been showing little girls made-up to look like adult women as a competition. The parents of these children push them even when the children don’t want to be apart of the pageants. In my opinion the mothers of these girls are trying to live through them by entering them into these pageants and persuading them into wanting to win. The show also objectifies women. It depicts a negative stereotype of what women should look like. These young girls get all dolled up, put in fake teeth so it looks like they have adult teeth, and dressed up into skimpy outfits. These girls are told to look beautiful. They have to put on make up, do their hair, and wear certain clothes. Psychologically these girls are in for a rollercoaster ride as they grow up. Because they are already made-up to look like adults they may feel robbed of their childhood. At young age they were also made-up to look like sex symbols, and at the age that they are children can be very impressionable. They may also have problems with their roles in relations to the opposite gender. This is due to the fact that they look and dress a certain way to win the competition, so who knows what they’ll do for men to get the one that they want, to “win” the competition for his heart. In my opinion this show needs to end because of the image it gives to women and the issues it will cause with women in the future.

http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/tag/toddlers-and-tiaras/

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