Handover occurs between shifts to ensure everyone is up to speed with patients. The exact nature of how it occurs varies greatly by hospital & specialty. E.g. in paediatrics or critical care all patients are handed over including outliers & outstanding patients requiring review. In
When assessing pain, ensure you begin by taking a history to characterise the pain as neuropathic pain, inflammatory pain and oncological pain all respond to different analgesia. SOCRATES is a helpful way to systematically take this history as it will help identify any serious underlying
There are certain situations where you need to prescribe IV fluids which vary from fluid resuscitation to maintenance fluids if a patient is nil-by-mouth (NBM) (e.g. pre-operatively, ‘drip & suck’ for bowel obstruction, acute pancreatitis, recent stroke with unsafe swallow). The NICE Guidance CG174 Intravenous
As an F1, you will quite frequently get bleeped to review a patient who has had a fall on the ward, particularly if you are working late evening/nights. Falls in hospital can be anything from a simple trip to a collapse/seizure in an acutely unwell
Sepsis is an infection with evidence of organ dysfunction. Septic shock is when a patient with sepsis is hypotensive despite appropriate fluid resuscitation. Introduction One study has shown that for every hour delay in receiving treatment mortality increases by 7.4%. There is NO diagnostic test
You are unlikely to be expected to make decisions about long term asthma management, therefore focus your efforts on learning how to deal with acute exacerbations. Brief history If a patient reports having a diagnosis of asthma, it is worth asking a few questions to
