Stethoscope; thermometer; blood pressure monitor; ultrasound machine: Sarang Raj, RN, wants to see that fourth tool become almost as common in the ED as the first three.
“I am a huge fan of the use of point of care ultrasound,” said Raj, an emergency nurse at UMass Memorial Health Alliance-Clinton Hospital, Leominster Campus and a self-proclaimed “ultrasound nerd.” Raj has set out to learn as much as he can about ultrasound under the guidance of his mentor, intensive care physician Dr. Gisela Banauch, MD, and with at-home simulation training.
“I’m in the room every 15 minutes; I’m the person at bedside; I’m collecting their data; I’m getting the vitals. It’s a wasted opportunity,” Raj said. “As an emergency nurse, I’m recognizing so many ways of collecting data prior to a physician entering the room.”
He envisions nurses using the Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma protocol for trauma patients to help expedite treatment decisions. The Bedside Lung Ultrasound in Emergency protocol can be useful in diagnosing a patient with shortness of breath, which can have many causes. Ultrasound is another way to see if a congestive heart failure patient is responding to diuretics.
Raj wants to push for this resource and formal education opportunities to be available for more nurses. He said he loves to rock the boat, and it’s paid off before. He successfully pushed his university to allow a group of nurse practitioner students taking anatomy to learn in the cadaver lab.
The first spark that helped ignite Raj’s interest in nursing came when he was 11 and had to be coached over the phone by an emergency operator to take his grandmother’s pulse while waiting for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. His grandmother recovered, and Raj was on his way toward a career he loves. In high school, he volunteered in a hospital near his home in California, then earned his CNA, CCMA and EMT license.
That high school experience is where he encountered his next spark: He saw the echo of a newborn baby’s heart.
“That blew my brain,” he said.
Raj holds a degree in psychology from the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is currently pursuing his DNP in Adult-Gerontology, Acute Care Nurse Practitioner track at the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing at UMass Chan Medical School, where he is the DEI student representative for the Graduate School of Nursing Organization and is also involved with the Nurses for Equity and Justice Coalition.
He joined ENA when he started his position in the ED, and he said he particularly likes the Journal of Emergency Nursing, something one of his mentors always seemed to be carrying with her.
“I love seeing what nurses are doing to change the nursing profession. We see things in a much different perspective than physicians do,” Raj said.
Raj thinks back to that childhood call with the emergency operator often.
“Here I am now, basically restarting hearts with my colleagues, fixing people,” Raj said. “It’s such a great honor.”