Hi folk

I am conscious of the fact that I am often one of those dispensing advice, but I also take advice where necessary. Just doing some training with a bunch of schools staff at the moment, and an issue was raised about the epi-pen.

It seems that one of the school nurses in the area has been contacting schools telling them they have to retrain all their staff in the “new method” of administration, and has been retraining them all to inject the epi-pen into the front of the thigh. I checked epi-pen’s own site today, and they have not changed their advice, and this is what we have been training – hence the query when we covered this, as a lot of the class had just had their retraining within the last few weeks.

One of the full-time first-aiders from a school contacted the school nurse for me during a break; the nurse said she had received this information from the Anaphylaxis Society, with a new DVD and other stuff to back up the change. So tonight I went onto their site (http://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk) to see what I could find out.

There was nothing on there about a change, and their on-line video, although describing the “draw the cross” the nurse was advocating, still seemed to show the injection in the side more than the front, although the angle of the camera could, I think, leave some scope for ambiguity.

Anyone able to throw some light on this?