The Glasgow Coma Scale is a scoring system used to evaluate someone’s level of consciousness. It is scored out of 15 with 15 being totally awake and alert and 3 being totally not.
The important thing to remember is that the lowest score possible is 3.
Absolutely anything can score a 3, however if you are a living, breathing human being, hopefully you are scoring well up into the 10s.
Generally the GSC is applied in trauma situations and can be used as part of the decision making process of such thing things like should this patient be intubated?
- ≥13 correlates with mild brain injury (or being ok)
- 9-12 correlates with moderate injury
- ≤8 represents severe brain injury – you should probably consider intubating them as they most likely cannot protect their airway