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Recently drive from Ohio to California by way of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado (which I had already been to), Utah, and Nevada. Then drove back through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.
I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on why pulse plethysmography is not talked about at all in EMS education (at least in my personal experience).
It was never once mentioned in my EMT basic course. It was given a single sentence in my Paramedic textbook that did not mention any detail or use cases, and my instructors never once talked about it during lecture. I've also never seen it mentioned in any sort of educational content or CE put on by any of my employers.
I've had multiple EMT partners ask me what the waveform meant, and I've heard others (including EMT FTOs) wrongly explain it to new hires as a graph of SpO2 where taller waves equate to higher oxygen levels.
It just seems kind of crazy to me that we have this thing on our monitors taking up equal real estate to EtCO2 and EKG tracings, yet nobody wants to talk about it. Is it just that it's unreliable and/or not relevant to pre-hospital providers? Or maybe I'm in the minority and it's actually part of the curriculum everywhere else.
Additionally, if anyone could provide some of their personal uses for it, which patients they like to pay attention to it in particular for, or any literature for me to read, that would be great. I feel like it's a hole in my knowledge that I would like to fill. Even if it's a relatively minor tool to add to my tool belt.