Nurse Led Ultrasound Guided Femoral Nerve Block in the Emergency Department

The ageing population admitted to the ED in developed countries is steadily increasing. Hip fractures are common among the elderly population, and related to increased mortality. Patient satisfaction with ED's has been an international challenge over several years. Acute pain is one of the most common reasons for patients coming admitted to the ED. However, undertreatment of pain is common, particularly in patients with hip fractures.

Pain control can be difficult, and often requires intensive nursing and physician care, as elderly patients may manifest cardiovascular and respiratory complications from opioid administration. Optimizing acute pain management in patients with orthopedic trauma is important and can translate into significant positive physiologic and financial outcomes.

At Vestfold Hospital Trust, pain relief of the hip fracture patient in ED has traditionally most often consisted of paracetamol and opiates. Additionally, the patients are offered FNB by the anesthesiologist, but concurrent conflicts and other organizational circumstances has have led to delayed block or no block for all or some patients. This often necessitate a continuation of pain relief in form of intravenous opioids, with increased risk of opioid side effects such as respiratory depression, delirium, constipation, urinary retention, nausea and vomiting and subsequently increased morbidity and increased costs for the hospital and the community.

The investigators believe that shifting this task to nurses working in the ED can secure patient with hip fractures sufficiently and timely pain relief. By giving trained nurses this new task of performing FNB the investigators can study how expert nurses qualifications' are utilized to strengthen the quality of the ED. This study aims to implement and evaluate the introduction of specially trained nurses performing ultrasound guided FNB in patients with hip fractures in the ED. This implementation may be beneficial to patients in terms of prompt analgesia, reduced opioid consumption, thereby reducing opioid adverse events, and it might influence risk of complications and length of stay. The aim of this study is to evaluate cumulative Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) score during rest and during passive movement (30 degree flexion in the hip) in patients with hip fracture during stay in the ED at 120 minutes after admission, thereby comparing nurse-led FNB versus standard of care.

The study has a randomized controlled trial design. Patients are randomized (1:1) into two groups:

• Trained nurses in ED provide ultrasound guided single-shot FNB shortly after (at arrival ED) the patient is diagnosed with a hip fracture.
• Nurses do not provide ultrasound guided single-shot FNB and the patient follows the FAST-TRACK-HIP FRACTURE course local guideline at our hospital.

Hypothesis: A single shot FNB performed by nurses in the ED compared to todays practice will result in lower cumulative NRS score first 120 minutes after admission to ED than current practice.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients arriving at the emergency department diagnosed with a hip fracture (X-ray confirmed)
• American Society of Anesthesiologists classification (ASA) 1-4
• Written informed consent by patient

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with dementia
• Known allergies to local anesthetic used in femoral nerve block.
• The patient is anticoagulated or uses platelet inhibitors. Acetylsalicylic acid and dipyridamole is allowed. If a recent (last 2 hours) International normalized ratio (INR) is below <1.5 the patient can be included.
• Pregnant
• Age <18 years
• Severe head injury which leads to significant loss of consciousness (Glascow coma score (GCS) <12)
• >10 mg or more morphine administrated pre-hospital
• Skin lesions/infection at block site
• Patients admitted with other suspected or verified fractures, except small fractures in hands and foots.