Chapter 123: 【123】Hurry, emergency rescue 4
Could a trainee perform standard heart compressions? Doctor Lin stared incredulously.
If the heart compressions aren’t done correctly, it’s just wasting the patient’s golden rescue time — do it wrong, and you’re not saving a patient; you’re killing one.
What are these two doing just standing around? Doctor Lin rolled up his sleeves and looked at Doctor Jiang and Huang Zhilei discontentedly.
“Hold on, Old Lin, it’s almost —” Doctor Jiang grabbed him, urging him to calm down.
Sometimes, emergency treatment for patients is not about having more people rush in to help. Resuscitation needs to follow an order, and the more urgent the situation, the more a cool head is required.
If someone had already started performing heart compressions on the patient, the best thing others could do was to prepare to step in when the person before them became tired or wasn’t compressing effectively. Because switching out compressors effectively meant pausing the resuscitation, which isn’t necessarily beneficial for a patient whose heartbeat is on the verge of recovery.
Now, that was exactly the situation with Father Liu.
Stopped and cautioned by his colleague, Doctor Lin turned to watch how Xie Wanying was doing.
With both hands pressed on the patient’s chest, Xie Wanying’s arms were straight like columns, generating the most powerful compression force.
At this sight, Doctor Lin was somewhat surprised. He knew all too well that many clinical medicine students started with straight arms during heart compressions but within seconds, their arms would be almost completely bent. Keeping the arms perfectly straight required significant arm strength as well as movements honed through training.
Moreover, the key to heart compression was accuracy in positioning, at the middle-to-lower third of the sternum. This obviously wasn’t too difficult, but what was tougher was maintaining the frequency and depth of the continuous heart compressions according to the standards, or else it would hardly be effective.
The frequency should follow the CPR guidelines, reaching a hundred to a hundred and twenty compressions per minute.
For an adult, the compression depth should be up to five centimeters deep, while controlling the force to not press down too hard, which could easily break the patient’s ribs.
So, achieving such standard and effective actions is not just a challenge for the average person but also for medical students. Even after practicing multiple times on mannequins, compressing on a real person feels completely different.
When new clinical medical students are tasked with performing life-saving heart compressions on dying patients, the teachers don’t expect them to get it right. It was for this reason that Doctor Lin did not agree to let a trainee be the first to perform heart compressions.
But now, looking at it, Xie Wanying’s depth with each compression was adequate, as could be seen from the patient’s chest movement.
Xie Wanying’s rate of compression showcased her distinct performance as a female medical student compared to the others.
A nearby nurse couldn’t help but count for her: one, two, three, four, five, six — it seemed as if the count could barely keep up with her pace.
Fast, it had to be fast, desperately pushing, in a rhythm racing against the Death God for a human life. A hundred and twenty compressions per minute could only be achieved by gambling with lives.
Even if all one’s strength was spent, one could not stop, absolutely could not, just a little bit more, it’s getting faster —
On the monitor, what sounded like Death’s doorbell—a straight line—suddenly changed back to beeping, beeps, beeps, beeps, as the gates of the King of Hell’s palace were forced shut, and the heartbeat returned to its waveform.
Xie Wanying immediately stopped her hands — any further compression now would be redundant and could potentially harm the patient.
Everyone around focused their eyes on her face.
Huang Zhilei was the first to react. He approached the bed, took out a medical flashlight to check Father Liu’s pupils, then felt his carotid artery, and measured his blood pressure.