Highly Confused?

Doctors usually determine the condition of a patient by the following factors:

1. Vitals signs - these include blood pressures, oxygen levels in blood, respiration rate, body temperature - abnormal signs will cause the doctors to be alerted to the patients condition.

2. Appearances - patients with different conditions will have different physical symptoms such as shaking and white foam in mouth for epilepsy.

3. Pupil dilation - doctors shine bright light into the patients' eyes when they suspect there are complications in the brain. E.g. the patients' pupil will dilate under bright lights in normal circumstances but when it doesn't it's a sign that the patient has entered a comma.

1) unstable vital signs
2) unstable heart rhythm
3) not breathing well
4) grossly abnormal lab values (say a potassium of 7.5)

Sometimes it's one of the above, other times it's a gut feeling : "Crap! This guy's gonna die!"

critical is when life is at a heighten possibility for fatality. It is usually blood pressure, heartrate, body temp, blood chemistry, level of consciousness determined.

The easiest way is to just look at the patient. You can usually tell if someone's acutely unwell or not based just on how they appear. If someone's sitting up, seems comfortable and is talking to you, they're probably not going to die in the next few minutes.

Next is the vital signs (heart rate, breathing rate, temperature, oxygen saturation and blood pressure). If these start going really bad, or they change a lot from what's normal from that patient, you need to worry.

And finally, lab test results can tell you that something important is happening. However, it usually takes a little while to get lab tests back, and most of them will only have been ordered because you already think something's wrong anyway, so it's often not a brilliant idea to rely on them entirely.