Fellowship Pearl # 3: More Procedural Sedation Tips
Titrate, synergize, anticipate, re-evaluate!
Titrate: when inducing sedation, titrate to effect and monitor for changes in level of consciousness that are consistent with the desired depth of sedation. BE AWARE of the pharmacokinetics of your selected agents, as some will have faster or slower onsets of action, and may have delayed peak effects; higher doses up front can result in over-sedation requiring rescue.
Synergize: in the ED, many of us are used to trying to stick to one or two sedative agents at a time. This is not inherently incorrect, but if you DO start using multiple agents, their combined effect is often greater than the sum of their individual effects, therefore requiring lower doses of each agent when used together than you might have needed individually. Furthermore--the dose-dependent effects of many agents are idiosyncratic (different effects on different patients) and many are actually metabolised faster by younger patients (ex/infants can really burn through propofol!)
Anticipate: you can often avoid using large cumulative doses of sedatives if you time small boluses around big stimuli. This can also help you avoid over-sedating a patient by having a stimulus-sedative mismatch! This does, however, require that you have a good understanding of the procedure that will be done and how painful/stimulating you expect various aspects to be, and the duration of the stimulus.
Re-evaluate: did the patient cry out and withdraw when traction was applied to their fracture? Then you may need more sedation on board! What are the patient’s ABC’s doing? How is the procedure going, and is it likely going to be uncomplicated or have there already been some snags? These are all aspects of the sedation to continually re-evaluate as you monitor the patient and the procedure. Remember: in the ED, a sedation is an elective procedure, therefore it should be possible to terminate at any time for the patient’s safety or best interest. This must be something you discuss with the clinician/service that is performing the procedure, as the clinician providing the sedation needs to be able to call for the safe termination of the procedure.