Patients with a suspected spinal cord injury should not be allowed to:

You are caring for a bicyclist who crashed in front of your building, and she has an angulated fracture to her left forearm. She tells you that she does not feel pain in her injured arm at all. How should you care for her?

a. Gently move her forearm back to its original position. b. Utilize a sling and swathe to immobilize the injury. c. Splint her forearm in the angulated position in which you found it. d. Apply gentle traction to her injured arm and secured it with a splint.

Why is defibrillation in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest so critical?

A) If cardiac arrest is not treated within the first few minutes, ventricular fibrillation will convert to asystole, a non-shockable heart rhythm. B) Research has shown that a heart in cardiac arrest will continue to pump blood for a few minutes before cardiac output drops to zero. C) In the first few minutes of cardiac arrest, the blood pressure is still normal, but will drop quickly, making successful defibrillation less likely. D) In the first few minutes of cardiac arrest the heart is still warm, but begins to cool rapidly making it less receptive to a defibrillatory shock.