Resuscitation

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Resuscitation is the process of quickly helping someone who is very sick and not breathing or without a heartbeat. It is a key part of emergency care, anesthesia, intensive care, and trauma care. Two well-known examples are cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

A good sign that resuscitation is working is adequate blood flow to the body's organs, which is often shown by urine output. The target is about 0.5 to 1 mL per kilogram of body weight per hour. For a typical 70 kg adult, that means about 35 mL per hour. Heart rate, mental status, and capillary refill can be affected by the underlying illness, so they are less reliable indicators of resuscitation success.

After a resuscitation, what was done needs to be recorded. Documentation is increasingly done with electronic health records, but handwritten notes are still common and can miss details. Tablet-based tools and other digital options can help make records clearer and easier to keep up to date. For these tools to help, they must fit into clinicians’ workflows and be accepted by them.