Treating patients during emergencies, whether you’re a doctor, nurse, or EMS professional, is stressful and exhausting work. Competent, compassionate care often requires working as quickly as possible while minimizing needless distractions. Many providers skip lunch and breaks, ignore their own personal needs, and work hour after hour in frigid temperatures or on empty stomachs. So it’s understandable that you might skip cleaning your suction machine, especially if you feel burdened by rules and regulations that seem to do little to help patients. A dirty suction machine, however, is more than just a technical violation of the rules. It poses a serious threat to vulnerable patients. 

Quickly and efficiently hooking up your portable suction machine can save precious seconds, preventing hypoxia and reducing the risk of serious respiratory complications. Hooking up a suction machine should only take a few seconds. However, if you’ve never done it before, the process can feel overwhelming and frustrating. It’s important that your team regularly drill the process, particularly if using suction machines is an infrequent part of your job with which team members have little practice. Here are the basic steps for getting your machine ready to go. 

With the advent of minimally invasive in-office procedures, patients are increasingly choosing sedation instead of general anesthesia. Sedation exists on a continuum, ranging from very mild sedation to deep sedation, but it is generally safer than anesthesia and requires a shorter recovery time. Patients may require sedation in some emergency medicine scenarios. 

A medical suction pump is a key piece of equipment during oral surgery. The right suction pump improves patient outcomes, reduces the risk of complications, and can promptly intervene in the event of a serious dental emergency. Here are some key reasons dentists should invest in a quality medical suction machine. 

Virtually every medical office worker, dental care provider, hospital employee, or first responder must use medical suctioning. Suctioning can be an important emergency intervention as well as a key aspect of routine care. The type of suctioning a provider must use depends on many factors, including the health of the patient, the type of suctioning machine available, and the reason for suctioning. Understanding the various types of suctioning you might use can help you choose the right tools and ensure you and your team are always well-trained on the latest techniques. 

Sooner or later, every nurse must suction a patient. For nurses who work in intensive care units or emergency care or who support patients with spinal cord injuries, suctioning may be a daily part of the job. When suctioning becomes routine, it’s easy to lose sight of the risks. A few simple precautionary measures can reduce the risk and improve patient outcomes. 

Medical providers have long used pulse oximeters as a quick and easy way to assess blood oxygen levels. But the amount of CO2 a person expires is an equally useful piece of information that provides key details about ventilation. Capnography is now widely available in the field and provides clear data about the amount of CO2 expired at each stage of respiration. Using capnography during medical suction can reduce the risk of hypoxia and provide additional details about patients at risk of serious suction-related complications. 

More than 17,000 people suffer spinal cord injuries each year, and an estimated 249,000-363,000 Americans are living with spinal cord injuries. A few generations ago, a spinal cord injury was often a death sentence, and almost always meant a much shorter life. Thanks to better medical care and greater awareness, most spinal cord injury sufferers survive, and many go on to live long and healthy lives. Despite these improvements, respiratory issues are common in SCI survivors. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death in this group, often due to complications of respiratory infections and poorly managed airway obstructions. First responders and other providers must be prepared to rapidly respond to airway issues in SCI patients, whether treating the immediate aftermath of a spinal cord injury or providing care to long-term SCI survivors.