Nerve agents: a guide for emergency nurses. Part 1
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Nerve agents: a guide for emergency nurses. Part 1

Stephen McGhee Director of global affairs, College of Nursing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States
Alan Finnegan Professor of mental health nursing, University of Chester, Chester, England
Neil Angus Senior lecturer, University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness, Scotland
John Clochesy Executive dean, School of Nursing, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, United States

Recent incidents in the UK and the alleged chemical attacks in Syria by the Bashar al-Assad regime have brought the subject of chemical weapons back into the public domain. To date these types of event have been relatively rare because terrorist plans to harm large numbers of people have mostly been thwarted.

This is the first part of a two-part article on nerve agents. Part one gives an overview of these agents, their historical background and manufacture, and how the agents affect physiology. Part two, which will appear in the next issue, considers the pre-hospital response to the use of nerve agents, including effective triage and decontamination, and in-hospital treatment.

Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2019.e1896

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and has been checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

stephenmcghee@health.usf.edu

Conflict of interest

None declared

McGhee S, Finnegan A, Angus N et al (2019) Nerve agents: a guide for emergency nurses. Part 1. Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2019.e1896

Published online: 19 February 2019

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