Medical Emergency and Emergency Response Plan

Purpose. This plan sets out how staff at each Lakeside site respond to a medical emergency involving a patient, visitor or colleague, and how they respond to fire, evacuation and other emergencies in the building.

1.Purpose and scope

Patients can collapse in the waiting room, react to a vaccine or a local anaesthetic, or arrive with chest pain or a severe injury. Every staff member must know their role. This plan applies to all three sites and every worker, and is practised in a drill at each site every year.

2.Recognising an emergency

Any staff member who sees a collapse, unresponsiveness, difficulty breathing, severe bleeding, a seizure, signs of anaphylaxis, chest pain, a stroke or a threat of harm must call for help immediately using the emergency call word on the intercom and the nearest duress button. Reception must record the time the emergency was called.

3.Roles

The first responder starts basic life support and stays with the patient. The practice nurse brings the emergency trolley, oxygen and the defibrillator and leads resuscitation until a general practitioner arrives and takes over. Reception calls the ambulance, gives the address and access point, sends someone to meet the ambulance, and clears the waiting room. The dental clinic follows the same roles with the Principal Dentist leading in the clinic.

• First responder: danger, response, send for help, airway, breathing, compressions, defibrillation
• Nurse: trolley, oxygen, defibrillator, adrenaline for anaphylaxis, recorder
• General practitioner: leads clinical care
• Reception: ambulance, access, crowd, timing

4.Emergency trolley and equipment

Each site holds a sealed emergency trolley with the drug and equipment list in this plan, oxygen with a bag-valve-mask, an automated external defibrillator and an anaphylaxis kit in every treatment and immunisation room. The practice nurse checks the trolley, oxygen and defibrillator weekly and after every use and records the check.

5.After the event

The treating practitioner records the event in the patient record. The nurse restocks the trolley and records the restock. The event must be entered in the incident register and a debrief held with the staff involved within 48 hours. Open disclosure applies if the emergency arose from care provided by Lakeside.

6.Fire and evacuation

On the fire alarm, the fire warden for the site directs staff to check rooms, move patients to the assembly point by the nearest exit and account for everyone using the appointment list. Patients who cannot walk are moved in wheelchairs; lifts must not be used. The reprocessing room steriliser and the oxygen supply must be turned off if it is safe to do so.

7.Drills and review

The Clinical Nurse Manager will run a medical emergency drill and a fire drill at each site each year, record attendance in the credential register and review this plan after each drill and after any real emergency.