First Job in years.

[Spritenurse1210, BSN, RN]

sorry guys, i ment to type first job in 4 months.

I thought i'd share this little store with you all. is there something i could have done differently? I work in the occupational health department at a local gas company. i had a young man come in, who said he had apiece of metal sticking in his eye. the man was wearing sunglasses, so i couldnt see what was the matter, and he kind of laughed at me when i asked him to remove the sunglasses so i could look at his eye. he had a small splinter of metal hit his contact, but it was nowhere in the eye that i could see. i refered him to the person in charge of workman's compensation, and sent him over to the local urgent care clinic to have the eye looked at (company has a contract with that clinic for DOT physicals and on the job injuries). do you think that i handled this situation well? if not what could i have done to make sure that it was handled better. i was the only one running the clinic today after only being there 2.5 weeks

[Little Panda RN, ASN, RN]

Sounds like you did the right thing. I remember from school (since I am a new nurse) that you never want to flush the eye if the patient states that they have something (as in this case, metal) in the eye. You would initially want to patch the eye to keep the patient from moving the eyeball around, to prevent any scratches or cuts to the cornea. Sending him to someone to check the eye even though you could not see anything, in my opinion was the appropiate action to take.