Be a Guidewire Guru
Emergency Physician Dr Brett Nelson from sinaiem.us (a great ultrasound website) recently shared his neat little demonstration of how to straighten a guidewire with one hand. An essential skill if you want to be a guidewire guru!
This is Brett’s description of the trick:
With one hand, you can straighten out the curved end of a guidewire. This is useful when you need to insert the guidewire into the hub of a catheter or needle, and you have already taken the guidewire out of its sheath.
The guidewire actually consists of a coiled wire over a central wire core. Stabilizing the proximal part (with your palm and 3rd-5th fingers) allows your index finger and thumb to stretch the outer coil a bit which straightens the distal aspect of the wire.
Care must be taken not to hold the wire too tightly, which could cause the wire to kink and defeat the purpose of this trick.
You can also read the description of how to do this on Academic Life in Emergency Medicine’s Trick of the Trade: Straightening the Guidewire.
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at The Alfred ICU, where he is Deputy Director (Education). He is a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University, the Lead for the Clinician Educator Incubator programme, and a CICM First Part Examiner.
He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives. He was one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) has been recognised for his contributions to education with awards from ANZICS, ANZAHPE, and ACEM.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Bluesky, he is @precordialthump.bsky.social and on the site that Elon has screwed up, he is @precordialthump.
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