Deliver quality healthcare in the most challenging field conditions

Full of practical clinical pearls and proven strategies, this indispensible guide shows you how to operate outside your comfort zone and devise effective treatment solutions when the traditional tools (medications, equipment, and staff) are unavailable—or when you need to provide care outside of your specialty. Improvised Medicine is a must for anyone who plans to work in global, disaster, or other resource-poor settings.

FEATURES:

• Simple-to-follow directions, diagrams, and illustrations describe practical techniques and the improvised equipment necessary to provide quality care during crises.
• Contains improvisations in anesthesia and airway management, dentistry, gynecology/obstetrics, infectious disease/laboratory diagnosis, internal medicine, otolaryngology, pediatrics and malnutrition, orthopedics, psychiatry, and surgery.
• Also includes basic disaster communication techniques, post-disaster forensics, a model hospital disaster plan, and innovative patient-transport methods.

LEARN HOW TO:

• Make an endotracheal tube in seconds
• Perform digital-oral and blind-nasotracheal intubations
• Make plaster bandages for splints/casts
• Give open-drop ether, ketamine drips, and halothane
• Use subcutaneous/intraperitoneal rehydration/transfusion
• Make ORS and standard nutrition formulas
• Clean, disinfect, and sterilize equipment for reuse
• Warm blood units in seconds inexpensively
• Take/view stereoscopic x-rays with standard equipment
• Quickly and easily stop postpartum hemorrhage
• Fashion surgical equipment from common items
• Evacuate patients easily for high-rise hospitals
• Make esophageal and precordial stethoscopes
• Quickly improvise a saline lock
• Make ECG electrode/defibrillator pads and ultrasound gel

Section I. The Situation

1: What is Improvised Medicine?

2: What Are Resource-Poor Situations?

Section II. Basic Needs

3: Communication

4: Preventive Medicine/Public Health

5: Basic Equipment

6: Cleaning and Reusing Equipment

Section III: Patient Assessment/Stabilization

7: Vital Signs and Triage

8: Airway

9: Breathing/Pulmonary

10: Circulation/Cardiovascular

11: Dehydration/Rehydration

12: Medications/Pharmacy/Envenomations

13: Analgesics

14: Anesthesia—Local and Regional

15: Sedation and General Anesthesia

16: Anesthesia: Ketamine, Ether and Halothane

17: Transfusion

18: Radiology/Imaging

19: Laboratory

20: Patient Transport/Evacuations

Section IV: Surgical Interventions

21: Surgery/Trauma

22: Wounds and Burns

23: Dental Diagnosis, Equipment, Blocks and Treatment

24: Dental: Fillings, Extractions and Trauma

25: Otolaryngology (ENT)

26: Neurology/Neurosurgery

27: Ophthalmology

28: Obstetrics/Gynecology

29: Orthopedics

30: Urology

Section V: Non-Surgical Interventions

31: Gastroenterology

32: Infectious Diseases

33: Malnutrition

34: Pediatrics and Neonatal

35: Psychiatry

36: Rehabilitation

37: Death and Survivors

Section VI: Appendices

Appendix 1: Hospital Disaster Plan

Appendix 2: Medical Kits