BC Coroners Service: Emergency medicine recommendation

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 56, No. 9, November 2014, Pages 432,434 News
By: Jim Christenson, MD David A. Haughton, MD, Roy Purssell, MD, FRCPC

The Emergency Services Advisory Committee (ESAC) wishes to make all physicians who practise emergency medicine in British Columbia aware of recommendations from a recent (13 May 2014 [revised 30 June 2014]) BC Coroners Service Preventable Death Bulletin:*

Follow the BC Drug and Poison Information Centre (DPIC) protocol for the treatment of a methadone overdose:
•    Asymptomatic patients with suspected [methadone] overdose and children ingesting any amount should be monitored for at least 10 hours. 
•    Symptomatic patients should be monitored until all symptoms resolve; observe for resedation for at least 6 hours and, concludes the Coroner,* up to 10 hours after the last dose of naloxone.
•    Call the DPIC when a patient with poison and overdose presents at the ED (24 hours: 604 682-5050 or 1 800 567-8911).

*The full bulletin, including the DPIC protocol for the treatment of a methadone overdose, is posted on the Section of Emergency Medicine website (www.sem-bc.com), the UBC Department of Emergency Medicine website (www.emergency.med.ubc.ca), and the BCMJ website (click here for the full bulletin).
—Jim Christenson, MD
Head, UBC Department of Emergency Medicine
—David A. Haughton, MD
Chair, Doctors of BC Section of Emergency Medicine
—Roy Purssell, MD
Director of BC Poison Control

Jim Christenson, MD, David A. Haughton, MD,, Roy Purssell, MD, FRCPC. BC Coroners Service: Emergency medicine recommendation. BCMJ, Vol. 56, No. 9, November, 2014, Page(s) 432,434 - News.


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