Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Vital Signs pt 1

Because I want to be a doctor, I have been volunteering in hospitals. Since 2012, I have accumulated over 500 volunteer hours. I even became a certified phlebotomist- or someone who will draw your blood. I had an internship in the OR, where I got to help in every single aspect of the surgery process a patient goes through. And I was a ROP medical student in the medical surgical unit and intensive care unit of a different hospital. One of the things I learned while doing all these different activities, was how to take healthy vital signs. I wanted to share this with you all today :).

There are five main vital signs that you will take from a patient each day, multiple times. The five are: Temperature, Blood Pressure, Respirations, Oxygen saturation levels, and heart rate.

Temperature: This one is pretty easy: there are four different ways that you can take a temperature from the body. Orally (mouth), Typanically (ear), axillary (armpit), rectally (through your anus). Because there are different temperature norms at each part of the body, you will find that you have different normal temperatures for each area that you are measuring. What you do to measure temperature is put the thermometer wherever the area you are measuring in is. For the arm pit you will put it in the arm pit, at least an inch and make sure the arm doesn't fidget. And for the mouth, you want to make sure the thermometer is placed under the tongue. Once you have placed it in the desired spot, you will wait thirty seconds for the reading to be completely accurate (axillary readings may take up to a minute). You will record what you got, and move on. The most common temperature place we use is the mouth. The healthy normal temperature orally is on average 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. You will take different temperatures from different spots depending on the patients health status. 

Blood Pressure: Blood pressure measures the amount of pressure that is being exerted on your veins. There are two different readings you will get when you measure blood pressure: systolic and diastolic. Systolic measures the hearts contraction, while diastolic measures the hearts relaxed state. The Normal ranges are120-140 systolic and 60-80 diastolic. There are common diseases that are associated with blood pressure. For example hypertension & Hypotension Hypertension is when your blood pressure is too high, while hypotension is when your blood pressure is too low. Both pose a serious threat to your health and well being. There are new devices that you can use now a days, and measuring blood pressure with a blood pressure cuff, sphygmomanometer, and a stethoscope have become obsolete. Now, all you have to do to measure blood pressure is put the cuff on your arm and press a button. 

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