Medical Assistant Prep / Unit 12 MAS 297 review, 2 to 3 minutes
An Infant's Vital Signs
The idea
This scene is constructed for this course. It walks through the differences when a medical assistant measures an infant's vital signs, from the pulse site to the counting time.
In practice
A father brings in his four-month-old daughter for a check because she has felt warm. The medical assistant explains each step to the father as she goes. She takes the temperature by the route the provider and the practice's policy call for with infants, with privacy, clean hands and gloves. She positions the baby on her back with her legs raised, and the father helps hold her still. She records the route with the reading. For the pulse, she uses the brachial artery above the inner elbow, because a radial pulse is hard to feel in an infant. She counts respirations for a full minute, because a baby's breathing can be irregular. Then she compares each number with the infant ranges, not the adult ones. A heart rate of one hundred thirty is within the infant range, though it would be fast for an adult. A breathing rate of forty is within the infant range as well. The temperature is above the normal range for its route. She records everything and tells the provider about the temperature, and she lets the father know that the provider will talk with him about it.
Where people slip
Applying adult ranges to an infant would have flagged a normal heart rate and breathing rate as alarming, while the one reading that mattered, the temperature, needed its route to be read correctly. Always choose the age-appropriate range and the correct route before deciding whether a number is outside expectations.
Your place on the trail
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