Cultural Artifact Speech

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The 19th century was a vital year for the study and field of medicine. Whether it was inventing tools, finding cures and discovering new illnesses, medicine was a topic that had everyone speculating.

Though this era was full of great inventions, there was one specificyear in which a monumental invention came along.

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1816, a young Dr. from France by the name of René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781-1826)invented the Stethoscope. According to US National Library of Medicine, the stethoscope was developed and the world of medicine changed. Patient care and better body awareness shot through the roof and since then it has only improved every year. For this reason, I chose to speak upon the culture of Nursing and most importantly, the artifact, the Stethoscope.

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Auscultation is known as the act of listening to sounds of the heart, lungs, and other organs for diagnostic purposes. The practice of auscultation began in the 18th century when a panel of physicians realized how important it was to be aware of the conditions of the patients inner body.

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The method used at the time is called percussion. Percussion is when the doctor ‘taps’ over the area of a patient’s body, allowing the body to react to those sound waves.

Physicians were taught by scientists that if the body did not react to taps then that was considered a red flag to a possible underlying problem.

(STOP FOR REFLECTIVE QUESTION)

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**REFLECTIVE QUESTION** LOOK AWAY**

Think about the time when you went to the doctors and he or she tapped the bottom of your knee cap and it would react bytwitching upwards. If it did not react it did not mean anything huge it justmeant that you have less reactive-sensitive nerves!

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Auscultation was a rather new and non-specific way of analyzing patients for diagnoses, it was rejected by many physicians from the start.

The funny looking, easily pliable and mobile stethoscope is a tool used all over the world by many medical professionals in order to listen to the internal functions of the organs.

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How was the stethoscope created? Before this time, the physicians used the rather intimidating method of auscultation in which the doctor would place his ear up against the patient’s bare chest. As stated in the Publication of "The man behind the stethoscope" Dr. Laennec was examining a female patient and due to her importance of keeping modest, he was unable to do so which led him to create a 'makeshift' stethoscope.

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At times, this method was deemed inaccurate because the doctor easily mistook sounds with their own. The earliest form of the stethoscope was a rolled piece of special paper shaped like a tube. The finely rolled paper, was was pressed up against the body allowing the sensitivity of the material to pass sounds of the internal body.

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*TRANSITION WALK* Now that you have an idea of the significance and history of thestethoscope for medicine, let’s go on about use for it in today’s day in age.

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In the midst of completing a 200hour Medical Assisting externship, I remember wrapping a blood pressurecuff around a patients arm and slipping the stethoscope chest piece directlyunderneath the brachial artery. This non-invasive procedure was done in orderto measure the patients’ blood pressure. After reading the blood pressure which was quite low, I had tocheck the respiration and heart rate at once.

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As I checked the heart rate by placing my index andmiddle finger on the artery in the wrist, I noticed the rate was extremelyhigh. That is when I stopped checking vitals, excused myselfout of the room and notified the doctor. Immediately the doctor came sprintingover, asked to borrow my stethoscope and let the patient know that their heartrate was bradycardic (AKA, extremely high). Finally, the doctor recommendedthe patient immediately head to the ER. Bythe use of the stethoscope, I was able to notice not just one but twounderlying conditions of this patient. The stethoscope quite possibly could’vesaved their life.

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Today, the stethoscope mostly used is single headedmeaning it only has a one sided chest piece, which acts like a flat diagram,this gives off the loudest volume as opposed to the double headed stethoscope.Also, the single headed stethoscope, is much easier to understand than thedouble headed so that also spikes up its popularity

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The double headed stethoscope has two chest pieces, one significantly biggerthan the other. The smaller piece is meant for listening to areas of the bodythat are much smaller like the wrist. The smaller piece allows sounds to bemore detailed and center in on the spot itself. The bigger piece is meant forlistening to lungs and the heart, the doctor needs to listen to the soundssurrounding those organs to find their functionality.

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Why the stethoscope?

Many of you are probably wondering, “Why, of all other tools that you associate a medical professional with, do you choose astethoscope?” Tobegin with, the stethoscope was the first tool I learned to use when I noticedthat Nursing was my calling 4 years ago. At first, I thought that thestethoscope was pretty self-explainable. I soon realized that I was wrong. In a semi-recent publication by Eli Finkelstein, Eli explained that there are different components to today's stethoscopes. There are even stethoscopes that record the sounds!

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Conclusion:

I hope that by now, the reason I chose the stethoscope as my artifact ismore than obvious. The stethoscope is (no pun intended) one of the mostinstrumental devices to ever come to the world of medicine. In fact, a 2012research done by Curtin University in Australia said that the stethoscope whencompared to another medical instrument, had one of the highest impacts ofpositivity and trustworthiness of the physician seen with it.

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Think about the amount of times you’ve seen astethoscope being used, whether you’re the patient or healthcare professional,the stethoscope is one of the best inventions and pieces of medical art to comearound. I must say that the stethoscope has been a pleasure to work with duringtraining, during my externship and even past those times. I cannot begin toexplain how much easier it has my job experience from taking vitals to findingsimple underlying conditions, notable to the doctor.