Evidence and practice

Trauma pain management in the emergency department: use of methoxyflurane as a patient-administered analgesic

Craig Wood Nurse consultant advanced care practitioner emergency medicine, Epsom Hospital, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, Surrey, England

Why you should read this article:

• To recognise the importance of providing rapid and effective pain relief for patients presenting to emergency departments (EDs) with traumatic injuries
• To learn about the potential benefits of using methoxyflurane for patients with traumatic injuries in the ED
• To understand how methoxyflurane is administered and the need for emergency nurses and ED clinicians to undergo training in its use

Evidence suggests that pain is highly prevalent among patients with traumatic injuries who attend emergency departments (EDs), yet accurate assessment and management of patients with acute pain can be challenging in this setting. Effective and rapid pain management is beneficial for patients and can support timely discharge from the ED, which is particularly important in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This article describes a service development project that introduced the use of a patient-administered analgesic, methoxyflurane, for patients with traumatic injuries with moderate to severe pain in one ED. The author outlines the benefits and rationale for using methoxyflurane as a first-line analgesic in this patient group and describes the main elements of training sessions for emergency nurses and other ED clinicians in the administration and supervision of patient-administered methoxyflurane.

Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2022.e2124

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

craig.wood2@nhs.net

Conflict of interest

The author gave an invited lecture at an event for advanced care practitioners that was sponsored by Galen Ltd (the distributor of methoxyflurane in the UK). He received no payment from Galen for his participation in the event, this article or the training

Wood C (2022) Trauma pain management in the emergency department: use of methoxyflurane as a patient-administered analgesic. Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2022.e2124

Published online: 16 June 2022

Keywords :

acute pain - analgesics - anti-inflammatories - clinical - education - emergency care - medicines - pain - pain control - pain management - professional - training - trauma