Eye Emergencies

The eyes work together to track objects. Therefore, where you have an injury to one eye you must think of the injury in both eyes. Be cautious of eye movement in the non-injured eye in both foreign body and/or impaled object situations.

Equipment:

    • Rolls of Gauze
    • Hard shield if available
    • Tape

Trauma to eye and impaled objects:

    1. Do not remove impaled objects.
    2. Have the patient close the non-affected eye.
    3. Elevate the patient’s head 30 degrees to reduce intraocular pressure.
    4. Cover the non-affected eye as well as injured eye to reduce movement of the injured eye.
    5. Carefully secure any impaled object that is in the eye with rolls of gauze or a paper cup with a hole in the bottom.
    6. Wrap both eyes with gauze around head to secure.
    7. Remind the patient to not move their eyes to prevent possible further damage.
A photo of a cornea punctured by a shard of metal.
Image by Community Eye Health on Flickr, shared under license CC-BY-NC 2.0.
Eye Emergency Bandaging Skills Verification Table

Eye Bandaging

1

2 (Instructor)

Initials

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Oregon EMS Psychomotor Skills Lab Manual Copyright © 2023 by Chris Hamper, BS, NRP; Carmen Curtz, Paramedic, BS; Holly A. Edwins, Paramedic, B.S.; and Jamie Kennel, PhD, MAS, NRP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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