What are the Best Ways to Deal with Adult Patients with Chemical Eye Injury in Emergency Department?

A chemical eye injury is when a chemical gets into the eye and harms it. Different types of chemicals can cause a chemical eye injury. Examples include chemicals found in cleansing products, bleach, hair dyes, and lawn fertilizers. Some chemicals cause only mild or short-term symptoms. Other chemicals can cause severe damage, including scarring of the cornea or vision loss. How mild or serious an injury is depends on the type of chemical, how long the chemical is in the eye and how far into the eye the chemical spreads. Without prompt intervention, irreversible visual loss and cutaneous disfigurement may prevail. However, there is variation in practice in giving nursing intervention to adult patient with chemical eye injury in emergency departments. There is no standard operating procedure in Hospital Authority. Therefore, there are variation in methods, solutions, skills, time and performers. Our group aimed to find out the best evidence to deal with chemical eye injury to the adult patients while attending the emergency department by conducting a literature search with the Johns Hopkins evidence base practice framework. Finally, there are recommendations on such issue with the translation timetable into practice by the trail run in 5 local emergency departments.