Perfusionist Charting Duties

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This figure depicts a perfusionist performing his duties during cardio-thoracic surgery.

In the top figure, the perfusionist:

...transcribes at regular intervals (every 5-10 minutes) more than two dozen parameters from a variety of monitors and devices, documents the types and doses of medications delivered, as well as blood gas parameters. These written records are usually kept for quality assurance purposes, or as evidence for litigation. The care of the patient ultimately supersedes any charting tasks, although the latter may cause some level of distraction. As such, the written record may at times reflect a perfusionist's best guess regarding the values for each recorded parameter. Accordingly, the written record may not be a sensitive measure of short-term changes in the recorded parameters.
(Donald Likosky, PhD, Robert Groom MS, CCP, & Gordon DeFoe, CCP)

In the bottom figure the perfusionist is shown more engaged with the surgery and the surgical team as he monitors the patient's status electronically and interacts with the heart-lung bypass machine in response to changes in the patient's vitals. Not only is he illustrated looking toward both his monitor and the operating table, the space of the OR appears more intimate than the way it is depicted in the first image.

Part of 2-page spread for a magazine article proposal, this was rendered in a softer, "patient-education" style. The challenge was to illustrate the surgery and the heart-lung bypass machine as accurately as possible without distracting details.

© William Scavone. All Rights Reserved.