----- Original Message -----
From: "Dunn Matthew Dr.
Subject: Re: Guidelines
> > Last week one of our residents came to me
> > visibly shaken after responding to such a code as she felt
> > the attending physician did not treat the patient
> > appropriately and among other things, gave drugs which were
> > not indicated and shocked the patient while they were in asystole.
>
> This is exactly the problem with ALS: here you have a member of staff
upset,
> coming to talk to you (i.e. not working at their best and taking up time
of
> 2 doctors) about a breach of guidelines that would not make any difference
> to patient outcome...The trouble with guidelines is that once they are
there,
> people think they are a) correct and b) important.
Precisely. Anyway, I can't see why the resident was upset; after all, the
patient was in asystole! (I don't "treat" asystole any more.)
AF
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