PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - J A Chambers
AU  - H R Guly
TI  - The need for better pre-hospital analgesia.
AID  - 10.1136/emj.10.3.187
DP  - 1993 Sep 01
TA  - Archives of Emergency Medicine
PG  - 187--192
VI  - 10
IP  - 3
4099  - http://emj.bmj.com/content/10/3/187.short
4100  - http://emj.bmj.com/content/10/3/187.full
SO  - Arch Emerg Med1993 Sep 01; 10
AB  - Many patients arrive at the accident and emergency (A&E) department in pain. To quantify this problem a retrospective analysis was performed of the clinical records of 502 consecutive patients arriving by ambulance at the A&E department over a 20-day period. A total of 273 (54%) of the patients had pain as a symptom on arrival and 69 (14%) were given opioid analgesia in the A&E department. Sixty of those given opioids had a single limb fracture. A survey of all ambulance services in the U.K. was conducted by means of a postal questionnaire sent to chief ambulance officers. Only five out of 65 services give any analgesia other than Entonox (B.O.C.). There were wide variations in the attitudes of services around the country to future developments. The authors suggest that paramedics should be trained to administer intravenous opioid analgesia.