Assessing ABC

This page discusses assessment strategies for the basic ABCs:

This is the most basic and also most important part of our job as paramedics. So long as you maintain a patient’s Airway, Breathing and Circulation until they get to hospital you have done your job as a paramedic well.

ABC

Airway

Check consciousness

Assess ability to take a deep breath

Assess ability to speak in a full sentence – can the patient speak a full sentences, juse phrases, single words, or not at all

Assess if the airway is clear

Breathing

Look, listen and feel for the movement of air

Assess the adequacy of the breathing process – is their sufficient rate and volume of air being moved?

Assess work of breathing (patient effort versus efficacy)

Listen to the chest (through Auscultation) and identify any variances of normal breathing. Normal breathing should sound like soft air movements; absent breath sounds is very bad; wheezes suggests bronchospasm; crackles and rales indicates pulomonary oedema or infection.

Circulation

Examine for life- threatening haemorrhage

Assess perfusion (level of consciousness, skin colour, pulse rate and blood preasure

Assess the pulse mannually – is it regular or irregular, what is the rate (15 seconds x 4), skin colour, temperature, central and peripheral cap refil.