It is that time of year again for our annual medical emergency training. This is just one aspect of the training that we undertake at Barker Dental Care to ensure that we are providing our patients with expert dental treatment in a well-equipped and safe environment by staff who are thoroughly trained to handle all eventualities.
Our trainer, John, has been conducting our training sessions for several years now and as well as being a qualified paramedic, he holds several postgraduate degrees in the field of medical education. During our afternoon training session we practice on cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), cover the use of medical emergency drugs in a dental setting, and practice using an automated external defibrillator (AED). As well as this in depth training every year, we also carry out medical emergency drills on a monthly basis to keep these skills fresh in our minds and make sure that we are always in practice with these invaluable techniques.
We purchased an AED for the practice back in 2008. AEDs are only recently becoming widely available in medical, dental, and community settings, and dental practices now legally required to have an AED machine on site. The statistics of using an AED a cardiac situation within the first 8 minutes are staggering, increasing the rate of survival to 80%. After 8 minutes however, sadly the likelihood of survival plummets. So by having our AED ready, available and only steps away from any room in the practice we could potentially save the life of one of our patients or team members should they suffer a cardiac event on the premises. As always, we certainly hope that we never have a medical emergency situation to test our skills, equipment, and training, but we, at Barker Dental Care, are doing everything that we can to ensure that we are well trained, prepared, and equipped should a medical emergency occur at our practice.
