What Kind of Stethoscope Do I Need?

3M Littman
Cardiology III Stethoscope

Different medical and emergency professionals require vastly different supplies and equipment. An EMT, cardiac nurse, and general practitioner will each need their own individual paraphernalia to suit their career obligations. One universal tool that every practitioner – regardless of type, education level, or specialty – needs is the common stethoscope. Every office, ambulance, hospital, clinic, facility, and trauma bag is equipped with a stethoscope. Scopes are available in a huge variety of styles and colors with customizable features and attachments for the perfect fit, no matter your taste or profession.

Who needs a stethoscope?

Virtually everyone who responds to medical needs will use a stethoscope on a regular basis. An EMT or other emergency responder should keep one in his or her bag; a nurse, physician’s assistant, or doctor uses one on practically every patient; respiratory therapists rely on scopes to determine treatment courses and measure progress; and medical professors demonstrate proper technique and listening methods.

Code Blue!

There’s a crisis in the ICU, the operating theater, a patient room, the emergency center. A patient is “coding” – he has stopped breathing, she is in cardiac arrest, an elderly patient has collapsed, a heart has stopped mid-surgery. The call goes out over the loudspeaker, summoning a specialized “crash team” of professionals trained in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) to resuscitate the unfortunate individual. The team, typically made up of various medical personnel and emergency responders, works as a unit under the team leader to perform lifesaving efforts on the patient. In “running a code,” every member of the team is required to understand his or her role and work in sync with the others; teamwork, trust, and well-defined responsibilities keep them unified and coordinated. Even the most cohesive group, however, cannot be a match for a Code Blue without the availability, proximity, and reliability of high-quality emergency resuscitation equipment and supplies.

An emergency cart, or “crash cart” as it is more commonly known, serves as a focal supply center for the crash team. An undersupplied or substandard cart results in confusion among the responders, a frantic scramble for appropriate equipment, and often the death of or irreversible damage to the patient due to a delay in proper treatment. Whether your cart is situated in a busy hospital, quiet outpatient surgical center, hectic clinic, or generally predictable nursing facility, it must be stocked and ready for use at all times. Read on to find out what your crash cart must contain in order to perform its function: waiting to save lives.

Making a Career Choice? Consider This

Grey’s Anatomy. ER. Scrubs. Private Practice. M*A*S*H*.  Dr. Kildare.  Dozens of television’s most popular shows, dating back to the mid-1900s, focus on the dramatic and heroic lives of doctors and medical personnel in assorted positions. We as a society often glorify the medical career, leading to changes in popular medical specialties in correlation with shifting societal demographics. Idealistic medical students tend to choose a specialty based on its attractiveness, the status associated with fashionable “hot” fields, and the enticing salaries that come with entering most high-demand departments. They may crave the excitement of the emergency room, the delicate concentration and prominence of surgery, or the lucrative earnings of cardiology. The choice may also be influenced by the trends and needs of society; plastic surgery to address growing societal pressure, orthopedic surgery to keep up with the professional athletic community, or psychiatry to help the mounting population of those affected by war or tragedy or grappling with mental illness.

One field of medicine is grossly overlooked despite a critical need for it. As America’s baby boomer generation – those born in the years following World War II, considered the time period from 1946 to 1964 by the U.S. Census Bureau – ages, the demand for qualified geriatricians is constantly rising. According to the American Geriatric Society, by the year 2030 we will need approximately 30,000 geriatricians to care for more than 70 million baby boomers reaching retirement age. Unfortunately, as of 2012 there were only 7,356 certified geriatricians in the United States and about half of all medical students are not required to complete geriatric training.