The Stethoscope Tag

I was tagged by both Little D, S.N. and Undergrad RN for this one.

Here are the rules:

1) Post a picture of your stethoscope

2) Tell what you love about it
3) Tell what you hate about it
4) Tell me what your dream stethoscope would be
5) Does it have a name?
6) Tag all your nursing friends (Including the one that tagged you) and don't forget to leave a comment on their blog telling them that you tagged them!

So they are both about to have a WTF moment.

We don't have stethoscopes as nurses or student nurses over here. Actually that's a little inaccurate. We do HAVE them. We just don't use them so prolifically.

From what I can tell Student Nurses / RNs across the pond (like we do just not as often) use them for measuring BPs and listening to lung sounds and heart rates. We don't commonly take manual Blood Pressure measurements. For some patients we have to but mostly we use digital machines like Dinamaps. OK mine doesn't have a thermometer on the side but it's just the same thing.

I have done manual BPs but not in a long time. When you have say 12 patients under your care and you need obs on all of them it's not really enough time to do manual BPs.

As for listening to hearts? I've done that. I've heard the sounds of mechanical heart valves. But again we don't do any of this routinely.

Lung sounds? Only in my ITU placement so far and really only then because of the risk of Ventilator Acquired Pneumonia. So there you were checking for air entry into the lungs at the top and bottom and any other noises like crepitus.

If you're looking for a stethoscope on the average ward around here you better start by finding the crash trolley. There'll usually be one hanging off of that.

I remember working the neonatal clinic in an outpatient's department as agency one day when I walked into the consulting room and the docs stethoscope was lying on the desk. He caught me staring at it and I said "That's a tiny stethoscope."
"It's for tiny patients." He replied. See because I'm working with adults most of the day it's easy to forget that we start of as little human beings, who need equally little equipment.

Sorry guys I don't have my own stethoscope. I have a pen torch for doing neuro obs and measuring tape for sizing TED stockings if they count as specialist equipment.

I have no-one to tag I guess. Unless of course Cellar Door has a stethoscope moment she would like to contribute?