I agree both of these women should be assessed with a 12-lead. It’s just the way it was done that I struggled with. Since I originally wrote this, I’ve learned much. One of the women I worked with “suggested” that she do all 12-leads on women – which I was relieved to hear.

In fact, for the the protection of my own marriage, my overactive hormones, and my coworkers inappropriate “desires,” I do my best to model extreme modesty at all times. Just the other day we transfered a 47 yo woman to another facility for angiography. Even though this woman was not attractive to me, I had her remove the hospital’s EKG leads herself, while I turned my back.

My male partner didn’t take the hint, and our pt didn’t care, but sometimes teaching and changing culture is a slow process.

Thanks again for chiming in!

1st situation: “New onset chest pain.” Yup, defintely merited a 12-lead!

2nd situation: In the systems that I’ve worked in, any sort of syncope episode merited EKG monitoring, if not the whole 12-lead. She sounds like she was stable enough for you to stay and perform one, and given her age, it probably wasn’t a bad idea…however, our ambulance rides could turn NSR to a-fib, so I would have avoided performing it enroute.

In my systems, we would do our best to avoid completely exposing the upper half of the torso for 12 leads, especially if they were alert and conversing with us. Male or female, we’d do our best to work around their clothing, and if we needed to move something, we said something along the lines of “Hey, I need to move your *insert article of clothing here* up/away/around so I can place this little sticky pad on your chest, which will allow us to see if there’s anything wrong with your heart.” Won’t lie this was a bit difficult with some female patients at times, but 95% of the time we managed to apply electrodes without gross exposure of their chest.

This was motivated by both patient modesty and comfort, as the temperatures in our next of the woods tended to be a little chilly during certian months.

I agree, both of these male medics were a bit eager to “expose” your patient. Talk to your chief next time it happens, because if the patients finds out that this isn’t a standard practice across the board, she might say something, and it will come back to bite you in the ass!

we have a job to do and they call us in their time of need, and we are given the patients trust. We owe it to them, our self and the profession to not ruin that trust.”

Great conclusion!!