Season Changes Call for Protocol Reviews

This news item is I guess a seasonal update to let you know that the seasons have changed.  Here in North America it’s getting colder while in the Southern Hemisphere, in Australia, and other folks down there you’re getting a little warmer right?  Well up here it’s getting colder.  I actually saw the first article across my page about somebody lost in the woods or having to deal with some kind of cold exposure injury.  In this case it was unfortunately an autistic child missing for 6 days in the woods near his house. He wasn’t found all that far from his home but it took 6 days for the rescuers to actually locate him.  He was alive, thankfully but shivering cold and wet, curled up amongst some leaves near the streambed.

You know this is just goes to point out that it’s time to review your protocols on dealing with cold injuries.  It’s time to pull out your old textbooks.  It’s time to go back and look at past MedicCast episode.  I think we covered cold injury several times.  Maybe I’ll be covering up coming up here soon on the show but certainly time to be aware of what goes on, physiology of cold, physiology of what happens in these patients and how to best rewarm them according to your protocols and what you are allowed to do.  Some people do active rewarming.  Some people are more proponents of passive rewarming.  They have pluses and minuses to both of them but it may come down to what you are allowed to do in your system.  I just wanted to use this article again to point out like I always do whenever the season’s change what goes on in your area?  What do you need to be prepared for as these seasons change?  You may be in an area where it’s a ski resort.  You’ll go to see more and huge influx of people into your community that haven’t been there for 6 months.  So you need to be prepared for higher colluvium, different types of injuries and different types of patients.

Again just wanted you to kind of keep this in mind and this is a good reminder.  Of course it’s a great article to paramedics you know a gentleman find a boy, call ESM paramedics came in, begin to treat him, started an IV, got him rehydrated, got him warmed up and out of his wet clothes and got him the care he needed and the ultimately will be better.  This is going to happen over the course of time and you should be prepared to treat these patients in your area as your protocols allowed.

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This article has been featured in the news segment of the MedicCast podcast episode Pain Management Champions and Episode 289.