New Monitors at St. John’s
by St. John’s Lutheran Hospital
May 4, 2010
St. John’s Lutheran Hospital in Libby recently celebrated the arrival of new GE DASH CapnoFlex CO2 monitors. "The purchase of the GE Dash 5000 is a result of recommendations from one of our trauma conferences. These conferences are designed to build upon success and improve systems, communication, preparedness, and outcomes for patients coming through the emergency department," stated Robert O’Rourke, CRT, RPSGT and Respiratory Therapy Manager at St. John’s.
The patient benefits resulting from new monitors are vast. "Basically, this monitor takes all of the vital patient information that we currently view for patient care and puts it onto one easy to view screen. Instead of looking at four different monitors, we now look at just one for all of the information that we need. This allows us more time to focus on other aspects of the patient’s treatment. The new monitor also expands our capability to determine the patient’s carbon dioxide build up without performing a painful blood draw from the artery," stated O’Rourke.
Dennis Lee Keown, RN, and Emergency Department Manager at St. John’s added, "As Robert stated, these monitors are capable of capnography monitoring which provides us with the measure of a patient’s carbon dioxide levels. This calculation can be used to determine if a patient is being adequately ventilated. From a patient’s perspective, poor ventilation can result in pneumonia, sever blood loss, pulmonary embolus, hypotension, and cardiopulmonary arrest. With this new non-invasive technology, we can continually monitor a patient helping us avoid these types of complications."
O’Rourke also stated that the purchase of these monitors is another step into the future for St. John’s.
"What the purchase of these monitors shows is the cooperation of the hospital as a whole, from the brainstorming and recommendations by the physicians and staff that provide the patient care, to administrative and financial support for the tools and equipment that are needed. This is a tangible step to St. John’s commitment to quality!"
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