Medical emergencies Flashcards
A patient starts experiencing shortness of breath, what is the normal breathing rate for an adult?
12-18 breaths per minute
What are reasons for loss of consciousness
Top 3 - faint
hypoglycaemia
anaphylaxis
If a patient loses consciousness on the dental chair, what do you do?
Stop what you are doing.
Go through ABCDE
airway, breathing, circulation check
disabilities, expose
call for ambulance
What are you checking for when you are checking a patients pulse?
Temperature rate rhythm BP (70 in wrist, 60 crook of arm, 50 carotid) strength of pulse
How can you tell loss of consciousness from anaphylaxis from syncope?
syncope/faint they come round quicker
A patient loses consciousness in your dental chair, you have checked ABCDE and suspect anaphylaxis, what else do you do?
remove cause of anaphylaxis,
Raise legs (venous return)
give oxygen 15L/min with non-rebreather mask (only get about 90% O2)
A patient has started to show signs of anaphylaxis, what are they?
- Marked upper laryngeal oedema and bronchospasm - stridor and wheezing
- tachycardia (>110bpm)
- increased resp rate
- abd pain, vomiting
- sense of impending doom
- flushing or pallow
When would you provide adrenaline to someone having an allergic reaction?
When it becomes a life threatening event.
How would you provide someone with adrenaline from the medical emergency bag?
check dates and the concentration (1mg/ml)
mix the vial gently.
snap the lid of the vial off away
take up 0.5ml of the fluid
say to the patient that normally you would do hand hygiene, disinfect the leg and put gloves on, but this is life threatening situation and no time
pull leg tight, inject into outer thigh muscle
release muscle as you are pulling out the needle to avoid it tracking up out
monitor.
give second dose 5 mins later if no improvement
if the patient is having an allergic reaction, but not life threatening, what would you do?
10mg cetirizine
4mg chlorphenamine
