Practical Emergency care of minor trauma in children

Document Content and Description Below

1 Minor trauma is a normal part of childhood. In fact children comprise between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of all patients attending a general Emergency Department (ED). In the UK it is also est... imated that in any one year around 2.5 million children visit the ED as a result of injury: this translates to around a fifth of all children each year. Children are therefore high users of Emergency Services, and Emergency Services spend quite a bit of their time seeing children! Children are likely to have further attendances, and the care that they receive inf luences their behaviour and fears at those times. The purpose of this handbook is to enable doctors, nurses and emergency nurse practitioners to manage common minor injuries, to know when to ask for help, and to spot when the ‘minor injury’ has more significance and is not actually minor. It is relevant for practitioners based in hospitals, minor injury units/ urgent care centres and primary care centres. Similarly, although aimed at a UK audience, most of it will be relevant to other developed countries. It is not an exhaustive text, and in this evidence-based world in which we now live, much is written on the basis of experience. Minor trauma is one of the poorest-researched areas of medicine and the quality of the scientific literature is generally poor. A child’s minor injury should not be seen in isolation. As healthcare professionals we need to consider our approach to the child, treating them with respect and compassion, being aware that this may be their first experience of hospital, and making sure that the take-home advice we give is sensible and practical to the whole family. The effect of something as simple as being in a plaster cast and missing school to attend follow-up appointments is seen as far from ‘minor’ by the family, so the term ‘minor injury’ is a bit of a misnomer. It is also our responsibility to pick up safeguarding issues when a child has an injury, in other words suboptimal care or supervision, or the more subtle indicator of a lack of compassion, such as delay in seeking medical help in a child who is obviously in pain. These are welfare issues, but sadly [Show More]

Last updated: 1 year ago

Preview 1 out of 227 pages