Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) - Australian Paramedical College

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) - Australian Paramedical College More Info: https://apcollege.edu.au/?utm_source=... Welcome to this session on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. My name's Sam Willis and I'm the senior lecturer of the Australian Paramedical College. Now COPD, in my opinion, is a very difficult condition to manage from a pre-hospital perspective. The reason being is that COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, is a disease that is characterized by permanent, destructive changes within the airways. What this means is that the interventions that you provide as a paramedic are really only supplemental to make the patient more comfortable because the damage has already been done to the lungs and there's nothing that you can do as the paramedic that's actually going to do anything long-term. So of course, your role is to make the patient comfortable, try to maintain their oxygenation, and of course give them the most professional service that you can give them. The purpose of this session is to discuss COPD in the context of the three diseases that make it up. In other words, what are the three diseases? How are they characterized within the body? Of course, look at the signs and symptoms associated with COPD. Rather than bombard you with massive lists of all the different signs and symptoms, I've called out the key signs and symptoms that can help you to manage this if are to be presented with this in the real world or even in the simulated world. Then we go to talk about the most appropriate pre-hospital treatment of COPD, as well as how you can adapt your history taking for patients who present with COPD. I'd like to use a case study to try and exemplify this case. Now, you're sent to a private address for a male who is complaining of a chest infection. When you arrive, you are met by an elderly male sitting in his favorite chair. So he hasn't moved much, but the door is open, and you're able to go in. You notice he has home oxygen, so you see that sitting next to his chair, and he has the nasal cannula in his nose. It's like a transparent translucent tube that goes around his ears and into his nose. He appears to have blue lips and cannot complete a sentence in one breath, but he is conscious, he is alert, and he is looking at you as you come into the house. As you say 'ambulance', he's short of breath like this. Very short of breath, can't breathe. Now, let's just stop there and have a think about what's occurred here. First of all, you're being dispatched to a private address, so that's the first thing. Working out whether this is a private address, it's in the public, so you're going to a private address. There's all sorts of things that you ... that's in your favor here. You'll be able to have an environment that has got some things in the environment to help you to determine what's happened. As you walked in you seen the oxygen straight away, so immediately you are thinking that this person has got a prescription from a medical practitioner of oxygen because you can't just go into a chemist and buy oxygen. That's just one example of how the environment's helped you to make a decision. You've also seen that this person is an elderly male. COPD does predominantly affect the middle aged to the elderly populations with one definition of elderly being around 64 or 65 years of age. There are different definitions of that. Remembering that COPD is a disease predominantly caused by cigarette smoking, so the person must have had a lifetime of cigarette smoking to actually be suffering from one of the conditions of COPD. Immediately, there's a lot in the history and the environment straight away. One of the things we've got on here is you see a male with an oxygen canister, you see the nasal cannula, you see that he's pale, he is looking at you. This is what we call the patient assessment triangle. There's three parts of the patient assessment triangle. That's looking at the circulation to the skin, so on this occasion he is pale, the work of breathing is quite labored and difficult and can't complete a sentence in one breath, and the general appearance. In other words, when you walk into the address, he does look at you and he is relatively alert. That suggests that he's been in this situation for quite some time because for most of us if we have acute shortness of breath, we tend to lose all situation awareness... ..In this session we've recognized the diseases that make up COPD, identifying the key signs and symptoms, and recognizing the most appropriate pre-hospital treatment of COPD. For more information about courses and becoming a Medic / Paramedic or any other professional in the pre-hospital emergency health care sector visit The Australian Paramedical College at: https://apcollege.edu.au/?utm_source=... RTO 32513