What Is Epinephrine?

A quick inside tip on field instructors; we all have our favorite questions to ask new riders. Those questions that help us get a more firm understanding of where our students knowledge base rests. What kind of practical knowledge are they carrying out into the field? Some of them are fair questions. Some of them aren’t. That’s life. One of my favorite questions to ask that new rider early in the ride along is, “So what is epinephrine anyway?” (For the record, this is an extremely fair question.) I’ve found this to be a telling conversation because the scope of the question gives the student a lot of rope. This is a question where the student can choose to be shockingly simple or impressively complex. The choice is theirs. I ask this question regardless of the students experience or training. I’ve had brand new EMT students knock the question out of the park and I’ve had experienced paramedics strike out miserably. All baseball metaphors aside, it’s a telling question. It speaks to a care givers understanding of the drugs we are able to administer. (Yes, all of us.) It’s revealing about ones understanding of the autonomic nervous system and it exposes an individuals understanding of basic pathophysiology. When I ask the question, the answer I’m looking for is something like this: Epinephrine is the primary neurotransmitter of the sympathetic nervous system. Ok … ok, I feel ...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs