This is the first post in a two-part series about understanding and interpreting arterial blood gases! If you want the rest of the post, you’ll have to check back next week! I’m getting real science-y again! So, just a heads up: my undergraduate degree was in chemistry. Kind of by accident, I took a lotContinue reading “ABGs (Part 1)”
Tag Archives: covid
Aerosol Generating Procedures
The long awaited clarification on aerosol generating procedures for physical therapists and physical therapist assistants has finally dropped! The APTA just released its professional guidelines for what portions of physical therapist and physical therapist assistant care equates to an aerosol generating procedures, therefore requiring increased PPE for procedure performance to ensure clinician safety. On AprilContinue reading “Aerosol Generating Procedures”
The Duet Device
Have you seen an Acapella Duet before? This is another one of those things I wish I could hand out to maybe half of my patients. A Duet device is a special kind of Positive Expiratory Pressure (PEP) that provides resistive oscillatory pressure to exhalation which promotes increased lung volumes due to re-inflation of collapsedContinue reading “The Duet Device”
FEV1
I spent some really great times as an educator in a heart and lung transplant program at a large hospital system. Specifically, I was a therapy educator. I taught PTs, PTAs, OTs, COTAs, and SLPs what they needed to know to safely provide rehab to patient after heart and lung transplants. I saw so manyContinue reading “FEV1”
Remote Interventions for Pain Amid COVID-19
I am the first to admit that I find treating patients with chronic pain to be SO HARD. Thanks to a few helpful tips from friends and some continuing education, I can just barely touch my toe to the water. But, like many, I have been wondering how COVID-19 and lockdowns and masks and allContinue reading “Remote Interventions for Pain Amid COVID-19”
PPE is the WORST! (aka Levels of Infection Control)
Did you know that PPE is actually the very last level of infection control??? To be honest, I have to admit that I had NO IDEA. Until COVID-19 became the impetus for my increase in research and writing, I had no idea that people other than healthcare professionals and their governing bodies were making anContinue reading “PPE is the WORST! (aka Levels of Infection Control)”
Out with the Old, In with the New (Dynamic Hyperinflation)
I can’t even begin to tell you guys how much I love teaching people about lung function in the presence of disease (read: HUGE NERD). Teaching patients how to correct for dynamic hyperinflation is one of those things that I really love teaching. If you remember from a few weeks ago, we talked about howContinue reading “Out with the Old, In with the New (Dynamic Hyperinflation)”
HFNO
HFNO stands for High Flow Nasal Oxygen. This is something that was used frequently in patients who were desaturating quickly with symptoms of COVID-19. It has the ability, through the use of several different devices or setups, to deliver very high concentrations of supplemental oxygen to patients with advanced pulmonary diseases or conditions. In theContinue reading “HFNO”
Time to Pump It Up! (aka Ejection Fractions)
I’m starting to push more in to the cardiac side of things. As well as this being the original intent of this blog years ago, it is also because your focus should also be shifting. If you are treating COVID-19 patients, you need to start focusing on their heart. The patients who did a stentContinue reading “Time to Pump It Up! (aka Ejection Fractions)”
ECMO
It sounds like a fuzzy lovable Sesame Street character, but this big boy ain’t no joke. ECMO or Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation is basically a lung outside the body. Blood passes through it. CO2 is removed and oxygen is introduced. It sounds simple, but that is the furthest thing from the truth. This is really advancedContinue reading “ECMO”
Doctor B (the PT) 