Just want to fill in some corrections to OP’s original post. It’s not exactly accurate (par for the course on tumblr, but hey, I have actual experience in traumas). Just as an FYI, when receiving patients after a car crash–or any sort of traumatic accident in which a patient arrives into the trauma bay–the CT is NOT the first thing a male or a female will undergo anyways. In order to ensure the patient is stable, we follow a series of assessments with ABCs, GCS, and pertinent vital signs. We then transition into a FAST scan (which is essentially a sonogram to check for any internal bleeding). This is given to both men and women, and often times (as this has happened to me on 3 separate occasions), you can usually tell if a female is pregnant, to the point of a few weeks gestation. At the same time all this is going on, nurses are drawing blood on the patient for Chem-7 and for females of child-bearing age, an HcG (aka a pregnancy test) can also be added. Next we roll the patient, assess their spine, and then X-rays are taken (which are not held for females pending HcG results because the amount of radiation is so little), and then we usually like to get all patients who are stable to a CT stat to assess for more internal bleeding/organ damage. While CT scans are not recommended during pregnancy, this is not a contraindication. And quite frankly, the reason a pregnancy test is required prior to CT in the inpatient or outpatient setting (less so in an emergent setting given the severity of the situation) is because hospitals don’t want to be sued in the event they don’t check the pregnancy status. Believe me, it’s happened.
And while some physicians may disagree, to me, my number one priority is the patient in an emergent setting. If that means the fetus may be harmed, then that’s the risk the mother and I will agree to take to save the mother’s life. And I’ve actually had a situation like this a few times in a trauma. So as a women in the healthcare field, I take offense to “medically being treated as the second most important person in your body” because that’s just simply not true.
And now, I can’t say this as a blanket statement to all hospitals. Because maybe another hospital has a different policy. But at the 2 large academic medical centers that I’ve trained at, this is what we follow.
Tl;dr: women aren’t treated as the second-most important people in their body in the medical field and the CT is not what anyone is immediately sent to post-trauma.
The-Lounge 