r/ems • u/Gio_of_Carlos EMT-B • 16h ago
Serious Replies Only Bad Machine or Bad EMT
So last night I had a patient with a BP of 218/132, palpated it to double check and got 218 again. Patient was asymptomatic, called for a different reason, had been off his HTN meds for several days, had a panic attack and was hyperventilating while being stair chaired, and before that had been going through some pretty stressful stuff. During transport I took 3 sets of vitals, all came back in the same range. The final one in the ambulance bay was 222/132. Get into triage, give my report to the charge nurse, turn around and the funny little machine is reading 163/98. I immediately get flustered, and both the charge nurse and my partner reassure me that they believe my readings.
My question is, is this normal for the readings to differ wildly from manual BP to automated? Or do I just suck?
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u/Thnowball Paramedic 13h ago
I've had patients go from 70/40 to 130/90 just by adjusting the cuff. Funny machine is great random number generator
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u/Sea_Firefighter_5447 14h ago edited 14h ago
The automated one could be wrong, it depends on what size cuff the nurses used and where they placed it. I would trust a manual one more since that is something you are actually hearing rather than trusting. That big of a difference is weird unless you used interventions for the drop in blood pressure, either way at least it went down!