Sudden postpartum collapse — massive PE resuscitation station

Station brief

Format. Resuscitation station, 12 minutes, run against a clock. You are the obstetric registrar on the postnatal ward. The assessor runs the timeline, plays the anaesthetist and the midwife, and challenges your thrombolysis decision, your ventilation targets, and your handling of arrest. ^[3][6]

Candidate instruction. Take charge of the resuscitation of a woman in massive pulmonary embolism after caesarean. Verbalise your recognition, your thrombolytic agent and dose, your ventilation settings, and your parallel preparation for haemorrhage. You will be challenged on imaging delay and on the perimortem sequence; the assessor is testing whether you hold the line on empiric thrombolysis.^[3]