It’s a bright fall morning and you’ve just arrived at your station. The off-going crews are still asleep, no doubt from a previous busy night of calls, so you drop your gear beside the truck and head for the kitchen to make coffee. As the crews filter in, you get caught up in a lively discussion about last night’s football game and before you know it, an hour has slipped by. Suddenly, the tones go off, summoning your station to a cardiac arrest. Chaos ensues as the ongoing crews rush to respond and the off-going crews rip their gear from trucks. The medic you relieve yells something about expired drugs, but there’s no time for details as you race from the station.

Nurses working in a small hospital often wear many hats. While a large, metropolitan hospital will often have a full staff of physicians, ancillary and support staff on-site around the clock, a small hospital may not have that luxury. This is especially evident during the “off-shifts” of evenings, nights and weekends.

After you’ve been working in the hospital for a while, it is clear to see that everyone has a defined role. Whether a nurse, a respiratory therapist, a laboratory technician or a facilities manager, all team members know their job duties, their scheduled work hours, and the hospital units that they cover.

Every medical administrator knows that purchasing life-saving equipment is one of the most critical decisions they must make. Whether you work for a large trauma center, a small walk-in clinic, or a rural fire department, the decisions you make when purchasing equipment will directly affect your personnel on the front lines. And one of the most important pieces of equipment in your life-saving arsenal is the portable suction unit.

Nurses know that efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to managing patient care over the course of a busy 12-hour shift. Scrambling for needed supplies is the last thing you want to do, especially in the case of an emergency. To avoid this, it is necessary to keep important supplies nearby and easy to access at all times.

The call comes in as a “gunshot wound to the head,” and you arrive on scene to find a middle-aged male with what appears to be a self-inflicted, small caliber entry wound to the right temple. He is sitting in a recliner and bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth. You carefully place him on a backboard, but once he is supine, his airway quickly fills with blood. Things are not looking good.

For those of you who have worked in the field of EMS for several decades, you can attest to the radical changes that have taken place in equipment over the years. Patient compartments are better designed, equipment is more sophisticated, and computer technology has greatly improved patient care, report writing, and access to reference information.

The call comes in as an “asthma attack” and you arrive on scene to find a ten-year-old asthmatic on the verge of respiratory arrest. You quickly set up oxygen and a breathing treatment while your partner hooks him up to the monitor and starts an IV. You load the patient for transport, whisk him down the street to the trauma center, which happens to have a specialized pediatric emergency center, and deliver him into the hands of specialists within a matter of minutes.

Whoever said “children are just small adults” never had to work on one in an emergency setting. Calls involving pediatric patients can be some of the most challenging you as a paramedic may encounter. Pediatric calls occur with less frequency than those involving adults, resulting in rusty skills and lack of confidence when treating juvenile patients.

This post is an excerpt taken from our complementary ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Purchasing a Portable Emergency Suction Device.

In its 2010 publication, Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science, the American Heart Association states: “Both portable and installed suction devices should be available for resuscitation emergencies.” 

Yet, many hospitals still do not stock these lifesaving devices.