Your step-by-step guide to key emergency and critical care procedures and hands-on nursing care. Whether you need to know how to prioritise your response to a patient with multiple injuries, or you need a quick practical guide to fluid therapy, this is the go-to resource. Colour photographs of real life cases take you through the procedures and after-care, detailing essential skills. This book provides vital information for emergency and critical care situations, whether you’re looking for confidence in handling emergency cases in a first-opinion practice, or a relevant, succinct guide for an emergency clinic. Be inspired to become more confident in your clinical skills and abilities, and learn how to apply your existing skills to an emergency situation.
A companion website provides additional resources useful in the management of emergency and critical patients. Visit the website to find information charts and video clips of procedures.
Written by a veterinary nurse and a veterinary surgeon who work together in the largest UK emergency clinic, this book is a practical, how-to manual with a nursing focus.
Suitable as a complete reference for nurses studying towards qualifications, or as a practical guide for daily use by veterinary nurses working in veterinary emergency and critical care.
Table of Contents
Preface vi
1 Triage and Assessment of the Emergency Patient 1
2 Monitoring the Critical Patient 9
3 Vascular Access 17
4 ‘Shock’ and Intravenous Fluid Therapy 29
5 Blood Gas, Acid–Base Analysis and Electrolyte Abnormalities 41
6 Analgesia and Anaesthesia of the Emergency and Critical Patient 52
7 Practical Laboratory Techniques 63
8 Techniques for Oxygen Supplementation 76
9 Nursing the Dyspnoeic Patient 86
10 Nursing the Cardiac Patient 97
11 Nursing the Acute Abdomen Patient 109
12 Nursing Urinary Tract Emergencies 123
13 Nursing the Poisoned Patient 133
14 Nursing the Trauma Patient 144
15 Nursing the Reproductive Patient 155
16 Small Animal Critical Care and Hospitalised Patient Nutrition 163
17 Nursing the Emergency Ophthalmology Patient 181
18 Cardiopulmonary Arrest and Resuscitation 189
19 Nursing Considerations in the Critical Patient 198
Index 209
