Nursing Interventions for Acute Spinal Cord Injury: In a Nutshell

00:01 So let's wrap this video series up.

00:02 For spinal cord injuries, prehospital and emergency room priorities are to maintain the airway and prevent secondary or further injury of the spinal cord.

00:13 Now, we add that extra letter for you, ABC and D.

00:17 Remember, airway, breathing, circulation, those are the same and everything.

00:21 The D was to remind you about disability, the neurological status and not making that spinal cord injury any worse.

00:29 Now when you're thinking through the clinical manifestations of a spinal cord injury, you wanna think that you can have problems developed in the neurological system, motor and sensory, the heart, the lungs, GI and the urinary systems.

00:46 So in order to do excellent care for this patient, you wanna be thinking through each one of those systems and the interventions that are most appropriate.

00:55 Spinal cord injury patients also develop complications of immobility and pain management.

01:00 So these will take a little longer to develop.

01:02 You wanna be on the alert to watch for signs to assess in both of these areas.

01:07 Thank you for watching our video today.