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Extended and Remote Care Part II

This is Part II of The Principles of Long-Term Patient Care. In the previous issue we reviewed the principles of long-term patient care concerning aspects of monitoring and re-SOAPing the patient, the environmental emergencies, and medical emergencies. This edition of the WMNL will concentrate on long-term patient care and the trauma patient.

ISSN-1059-6518

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NAVIGATION−exploring the mysteries of going from Point A to Point B

Each summer as I sail the Maine coast, I monitor channel 16 on the VHF radio. For those of you who are not boating enthusiasts, 16 is the emergency channel. Mariners are expected to monitor channel 16 at all times while underway for news of navigational hazards and other vessels in distress. If a distress call comes from a position near your own position, you are expected  to join the radio call and offer assistance if you can safely do so.

While monitoring the radio, I am amazed by the number of people who radio the Coast Guard asking for assistance but who are unable to tell the Coast Guard where they are.

 

ISSN-1059-6518

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Disaster and the Urban Wilderness

At 4:55 p.m. on October 17, 1989, Buck Helm,
a 57-year-old longshoremen’s union clerk in Oakland, California, left work in his car to get something to eat. Nine minutes later, fifty-seven miles to the south and deep beneath the surface of the earth, the Pacific and North American tectonic plates shifted against each other and sent subterranean shock-waves out like ripples in a pond. In moments, the shock-waves reached the multi-level, elevated portion of Interstate 880 that runs along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. They turned the highway into a concrete monster that writhed and undulated as the continent-sized plates far below tried to settle their differences.

ISSN-1059-6518

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