Quote:
Originally Posted by qualified-merc
The past three months have been very strange. Previously to my family member's health issues, I thought I understood quite a bit about health and how the human body works. The past three months have taught me I knew and understood very very little. There is a mysterious side to how our bodies work and function. I am still learning.
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Despite the heavy science Medicine is considered an art.
I am at one of the hospitals where I am getting training in respiratory care (respiratory therapy). I monitor a patient with a tracheostomy who is sleeping, and the ventilator is giving him all of his breaths. The patient is not even trying to initiate a breath on his own.
Later in the day I go in to monitor the patient and he is disconnected from the ventilator and talking to the other patients. He does not need the ventilator to breath for him.
I speak to the instructor about this, and she said he is mentally dependent on the ventilator for his breathing at night. That means at night his own mind is keeping him from breathing on his own when he sleeps.
Some patients are mentally dependent all of the time but do initiate some of their own breaths which the ventilator lets them do. Or it assists them when they initiate a breath.
They attempt many times to 'wean' them from the ventilator. That means they go through a routine to build up the patients' respiratory muscles and so on so that when they are removed from the vent, they are physically able to breath on their own. But the mentally dependent patients seldom respond to that.
To me really odd but it is what it is.