Ok, time for ER nursing nerd-out. Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC) is a rare blood disorder that is a true acute emergency. In emergency medicine it is usually a sequelae of sepsis.
One of the things I love about working as an ER nurse is that it is the only area in a hospital where the patients have no diagnosis. That means that medicine and nursing are figuring out what is happening in real time. This requires some serious quick thinking based on acquired knowledge.
A patient with DIC can hemorrhage and have an ischemic event caused by a thrombus (blood clot) at the same time. Very complex and difficult to treat…
After eight hours of intensive care in our ER, we just snatched one from the jaws of death, stabilized her and sent her on her way to the ICU.
It was a very good day indeed.