What a disaster. In an emergency, just use the dirty suction connector, though he probably didn’t know it fell back there.
It’s a shame it took that long to intubate the baby and suction them. Seems like a straightforward meconium aspiration from the description. But if he came out blue and floppy, that’s an OB problem as the plugged lungs are not in use yet. Seems like the peds guy was thrown under the bus for an, at least partial OB and partial systems issue. I drop stuff all the time and there are replacements for most critical things within arms reach. There’s also a tech, nurse, etc. who can run and get something. As always, there has to be much more to the story. Perhaps there wasn’t any other meconium aspirators in the room or even on the floor? Why not just try regular suction tubing, though they might not have had it in a small enough size. Why not adapt the suction tubing to the ETT and seal it with your fingers with the connector off? Etc.
That’s a good other take home point. Maybe it was a Navy/austere environment necessity, but think outside the box in an emergency and use what you have and try to make it work.
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