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Lessons in Transport - Cognitive Biases in Critical Care Transport
As critical care transport professionals we are often perceived as an action oriented specialty. We frequently pride ourselves on procedural excellence and efficiency. (a difficult intubation, or fast scene-time etc.) However, the reality is that we spend the vast majority of our patient care time engaged in cognitive behavior... in THINKING rather than acting!
Because of this, it is imperative that we make every possible effort to understand how we think while caring for others. In addition, we should be aware of some of the cognitive biases that threaten our thinking processes, decision making, and thus the patients who place their trust in us.
Lessons in Transport - Upper GI Bleeding
It is 2am on a cold, dark, winter night and you are dispatched to a small rural hospital to transport a patient by ground with a GI bleed back to UCMC medical ICU. Enroute dispatch notifies you that your patient has deteriorated and is profoundly hypotensive. The ED physician at the outside hospital is attempting intubation for airway control. On arrival you find a middle-aged male with all the classic stigmata of end-stage liver disease. More importantly he has a systolic blood pressure of 60 and a HR of 130. A literal fountain of blood spews from the patients mouth, around a successfully placed endotracheal tube, and is now beginning to pool on the floor. You know this patient needs massive resuscitation from his likely bleeding esophageal varices... but you are 55 minutes by ground to UCMC and know that your patient will not survive the transport unless something is done to control the bleeding...
Lessons in Transport - Avoiding Medication Errors
It takes an estimated 80-200 correctly executed tasks to successfully administer a single dose of a medication to a critically ill patient...
Our reality in transport medicine... We routinely work in an environment that is prone to medical error. An environment that is...
- Dynamic and potentially dangerous
- Fast paced... where speed is perceived as excellence
- Limited in space, resources, and personnel
- Built on inferred indications with little access to confirmatory tests
- Frequent patient care hand offs of high acuity patients
- Defined by actions and inaction that have immediate consequences with little recovery time to stop sequential errors
- Not reproducible... No mission is ever the same