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Attention: The Focus of Consciousness

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Crisis Management in Acute Care Settings

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Abstract

After 1 week of night shift in an ICU, a fatigued physician was faced with an emergency. The call for help reached him in a moment when his attention was focused on another problem. Tired and still immersed in thought, he had to manage an emergency situation where he had to concentrate on mask ventilation and at the same time prepare for reintubation. When he manually wanted to give a bolus of an analgosedative drug to the patient he accidentally manipulated the wrong infusion pump and applied a high dose of a catecholamine. Due to an immediate intervention with a vasodilating drug, further patient harm due to an excessive increase in heart rate and arterial blood pressure was prevented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Klinik für Anästhesiologie, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen-Nürnberg, Krankenhausstr. 12, 91054, Erlangen, Germany

    Dr. Michael St.Pierre

  2. Hohenheimerstr. 104, 71686, Remseck, Germany

    Dr. Gesine Hofinger

  3. c/o Gesine Hofinger Hohenheimerstr. 104, 71686, Remseck, Germany

    Cornelius Buerschaper

  4. Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital, 65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Robert Simon (Director Center for Medical Education)

Authors
  1. Dr. Michael St.Pierre
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  2. Dr. Gesine Hofinger
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  3. Cornelius Buerschaper
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  4. Robert Simon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael St.Pierre .

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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St.Pierre, M., Hofinger, G., Buerschaper, C., Simon, R. (2011). Attention: The Focus of Consciousness. In: Crisis Management in Acute Care Settings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19700-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19700-0_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19699-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19700-0

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