Why you should be prepared to address non-ocular emergencies with your patients in clinic

Cecelia Koetting, OD, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, recently presented a session at the American Optometric Association’s 5th World Congress of Optometry. She talks with Optometry 360 about why it’s important for all optometrists to have an emergency plan for non-ocular events that occur in their office.

Cecelia Koetting, OD:

Hey everyone. Cecilia Koetting here. It’s great to see you. I had the pleasure of putting on this great workshop with my friends Jackie Theis and Jade Coats at AOA and it was specifically looking at how to handle non-ocular emergencies in our clinic. This was born out of a couple of situations that have happened over the years, and we got together and said, okay, I think this would be a really good idea for us to get more of an immersive hands-on experience. Because a lot of times things come from muscle memory or just memory of having run through scenarios similar to CPR training. What we did was we really tried to give everybody the tools as far as what to have in your office. What’s in a medical kits, what are things that you should have in your medical kit, how to put it together.

Then we talked through how to maybe come up with plans. Not just A of who in your office is in charge of what when there’s an emergency and you call a code, but what do you do when that person’s out sick? Who’s B? Who’s C? What do you do and what are the backup plans? Kind of thinking that through.

Then we got into the groups and we did hands-on with a couple of different scenarios. One being seizures. The second being patient maybe passing out and figuring out, okay, is this because they are having a vasovagal response? Did you just check their IOP? Or is somebody passing out because maybe they’re actually having an overdose from drugs, which is a consideration at this point. What about hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia? What do you do in those situations? Checking blood sugar before you start administering any medications.

Then getting into the more concerning, what happens when this patient actually not only loses consciousness, but it turns out that they are no longer breathing and are having a heart attack? Or what if they’re actually having a drug overdose and how to actually use Narcan and where to get Narcan. We talk about that that’s something that’s important to have. I carry it around with me on my person. My husband is in law enforcement. For us, this is something that has been a big discussion of making sure both being safe for those around us as well as ourselves, if something were to happen. There are times where there’s incidental exposure to things that can cause overdose, fentanyl being the biggest concern and being aware of how to utilize Narcan personally for real life situations, not just at work is good. But also for our patients in our clinic setting. Then how to identify when to maybe even use it.

We really got into a lot. It was great. Again, just the big part of it and what I want you guys to take away from this little tidbit is we need to be prepared. Most of us probably are not as prepared as we’d like to think we are until unfortunately, we’re in one of those situations. Take a minute and do your research.