Shortly after I began my shift last night, I spotted a pair of nurses running down the hallway pushing a crash cart. Following them over to X-ray, I found an exhausted-looking med student performing (pretty weak) compressions on a patient. I relieved him while one nurse pulled meds from the cart, another went to grab an ambu bag, and a second tech cut a longer piece of suction tubing that would actually reach from the canister to the patient.
After a minute or two of scrambling around, we had everything we needed. The patient was tubed, regained a pulse, and transported back to the main ED.
Fast forward to several hours later, when we had a patient with severe chest pain who needed to be scanned for a possible dissection. Before we left, I grabbed an airway kit, a med bag, ambu bag, full oxygen tank, extra liter of fluid, and a yankauer and placed them underneath the stretcher. We also dragged the defibrillator along with us because the patient was bradycardic.
Of course, the patient made it through the scan without incident, proving once again that any patient that might code, will code... unless you are prepared.
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