Originally Posted by woodcycl
Thanks Dr.Pete! Yeah - Kristie applied some direct pressure with a towel and they placed the bagged ice on the outside of several folds in the towel. I'm definitely no expert in the matter ... even with a little training, when an actual "Emergency" happens, it is strange how you sort of go blank with the right things to do.
This is a pet peeve--I think it gets taught in nursing school somewhere. Blood from a wound is bad, and putting a big 'ol dressing on a wound that has potential to bleed just hides the blood longer and does NOTHING to stop it.
I remember a patient I took care of on call one night who was bleeding from her surgical incision. The nurses just kept adding more gauze to the dressing, until they called me when her HR was going up and her urine output was low (bad signs). I took down the dressing and there was a good unit of blood sopped up in this big pillow of gauze. I ended up opening the wound and throwing a stitch around a small blood vessel that was bleeding pretty briskly. I kindly asked them to call me if the dressing soaked through again instead of bulking up the dressing.
Don't feel bad--it takes a LOT of training to stay calm/cool in those situations--but you did fine.
