I hear this all the time, someone’s freezing and they need to stay awake to stay alive, or they’re overdosing and need to be woken up or kept awake so they don’t die. I don’t understand that though, wouldn’t that put extra stress on the body and actually kill you?
In: Biology
Former EMT here.
Ultimately, my #1 concern in keeping a trauma patient alive was blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate. My job was to keep the plumbing working until a surgeon could fix the problem. Medical patients could have a few more issues but in general, the same story.
But as others have said, it’s easier to assess people when they are awake, and the longer I could keep folks awake, the better. No longer being able to wake someone up signals a severe issue.
If a patient was A&O x 4 (awake and oriented to person, place, time, and event), I felt much better about their status.
EDIT: Sorry, a bit more detail. One of the heart’s hardest jobs is pumping blood to the brain. It has to fight gravity to do that and of all human organs the brain is one of the least equipped to go without blood flow. If blood is no longer getting to the brain, a person loses consciousness. So someone talking to me, or even moaning in pain, was a good sign because it means blood, and therefore oxygen, was still getting to the brain.
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