Epilepsy emergency rescue training

Abstract

The NICE audit of epilepsy related deaths revealed that 1200 epilepsy deaths occur every year in the UK, with 42% potentially avoidable.[1] Convulsive status epilepticus (SE) is a life-threatening condition with over 20% mortality rate, especially if early treatment is not initiated .[2] Ten percent of all UK emergency department (ED) admissions are due to epilepsy, usually over represented by cases of SE.[3] Six out of seven epilepsy cases seen in the ED are admitted into medical care.[4]Patients with chronic and/or treatment resistant epilepsy carry a higher risk of premature death. When a seizure lasts for five minutes or more then the patient is at high risk of continuing to SE and this may result in causing brain damage or death.[2]Buccal midazolam is an emergency rescue medication prescribed on a special named patient license to reduce the duration of an epileptic seizure and prevent SE.[2,5] It should be administered by a trained person and is widely used due to its effectiveness and social acceptability. In the UK, epilepsy education and training courses are expected to be conducted by epilepsy professionals in line with the agreed training guidelines of Joint Epilepsy Council (JEC) backed up by evidence from NICE.[6,7] Training should provide an overview of epilepsy to facilitate safe care and appropriate administration of rescue medication for people with epilepsy (PWE) when experiencing a prolonged seizure. The medication is prescribed on specialist advice by the GP or specialists directly.Unfortunately the JEC guidelines are not robust enough to provide assurances of safe care. This problem had a myriad of complexities and an appropriate solution using web based resource was piloted, tested, and applied successfully using quality improvement methodology.