Emergency equipment needed in a Dental or Medical Practice

Emergency equipment needed in a Dental or Medical Practice

In November 2013 the Resuscitation Council (UK) developed new Quality Standards for  emergency equipment needed in a Dental and Medical Practices.  Since then I have seen several debates around what equipment is required.  I think there is debate because the Resuscitation Council when setting standards are always reluctant to use words such as ‘must’.  Instead they have described the equipment that Practices ‘should’ have available.  In my opinion describing what equipment ‘should’ be available allows practices flexibility to undertake their own risk assessments but it also allows for debate.

Do Practices ‘have to have’ a defibrillator?

Practices that I work with often ask “must I have a defibrillator?”  My short answer is “no” but the longer answer is a bit more complicated.  I agree with the Resuscitation Council that the general public expect healthcare premises to have a defibrillator available and Dental and Medical Practices are no different.

The General Dental Council reinforce the Resuscitation Council (UK) and re-iterate that practices ‘should’ have a defibrillator immediately available.  So what does this mean in practice?  It means that the final decision is yours, but if you decide not to have one available and a situation arises where it may have been beneficial you leave yourself open to criticism.  However, if you have a situation when someone may have needed to be defibrillated, and wasn’t, their chances of survival drop with every minute.  So my question is “Do you want to be the practice that saved someone’s life or do you want to be the practice that will never know if you could have saved their life?”

Defibrillators are not the expensive items that they used to be.  If you would like help, please contact me.

Other emergency equipment I would recommend

With the latest Resuscitation guidelines there has been more clarification around the use of oxygen with patients suffering cardiac chest pain.  It is recommended that patients are only given oxygen if their saturations are under 94%.  I now recommend that practices have pulse oximeter available, there are in expensive models available for around £25.

When teaching I always tell my learners about an incident 20 or more years ago when we didn’t do someone’s blood sugar as part of our initial assessment and it was this that was the problem.  I always therefore recommend checking someone’s blood sugar if they are unwell.  Glucometers are also inexpensive items now.

If you would like help purchasing these items please contact me.