IV Utilization or Access by Licensed Athletic Trainer in the Clinical Setting.
Imagine being out at a sports practice, it’s hot and humid and the team is in its preseason conditioning program. One of your athletes observes profuse sweating, dizziness, decreased motor function. In addition, this athlete has a history of sickle-cell trait and is starting to cramp in their lower extremities. We remove them from practice and move them to a cool indoor environment. We start administering oxygen and activate our emergency action plan (EAP) and called emergency medical services (EMS), but it will be 20 minutes or so to travel to the campus. What else can we do? We apply ice bags to the lower extremities, we cool the athlete and administer water and electrolytes orally and we wait and wait until EMS gets there.
Some of the skills include teaching our student how to suture wounds, perform blood draws, perform subcutaneous injections, and administration of an intravenous (IV),and/or establish IV access.
An intravenous IV with the insertion of an IV catheter allows a route for medication or fluids from an attached bag to be rapidly administered. Medications can also be injected via an attached
port or from the injection of medication into the IV bag. In most cases, the IV route carries fluids to a patient for rapid rehydration and stabilizing the patient. The introduction of an IV or IV access
before arrival at the hospital emergency room (ER) can prevent patient mortality.
Sport Exerc Med Open J. 2018; 4(1): e1-e3. doi: 10.17140/SEMOJ-4-e004
