Hello, med students. My name is Zach Olson and thank you for downloading this episode of the EM

Clerkship Podcast. This is it today. I'm excited. Trauma is almost done. And to be quite honest,

I'm like super sick of trauma. This week we are going to cover the last part of trauma.

We're going to cover a quick approach to trauma in the pregnant patient, and then that's it.

So this is big. And this is scary too, because mom's scared. You're going to be scared,

but don't be scared.

It's actually pretty easy.

If a pregnant patient gets injured, just breathe and do five extra steps.

It's only five steps.

It's going to be okay.

Mother on her side, Pelpe the Fundus, ultrasound type and screen, and then most importantly, Cardiotococytinamometry.

I think I said that right, which is fetal heart monitoring.

So let's go through each of these, kind of one at a time.

You have a pregnant patient that gets injured.

First step, step one, mother on her side.

Specifically, you want to put the mother in the left lateral decubitous position.

This is especially important in the third trimester when that big baby can basically lay

on the IVC and then it

cuts off half of the heart's blood from preloading. In trauma, that's pretty much enough to kill

somebody who's kind of on the edge and has lost a lot of blood already. So all pregnant women,

especially in the third trimester, need to be placed in the left lateral decubitous position.

You need to roll that uterus off the inferior vina cava.

...