Pediatric injury care, how to improve it?

Personal injury is the number one cause of death among children 1 to 18 year old in America. Every year, 1 out of 4 children will end up at the emergency room to be treated for unintentional or intentional injury. Some of them will end up with lifelong disabilities. On average, the American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that $50 billion is spent each year in the US to care for injured children. Children’s injuries often cause emotional distress not only to the child but also to the family. The financial burden caused by injured children often add to the existing stress caused by the injury itself.

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics published Best Practices for Pediatric Injury Care. In their guidelines, the lead authors David W. Tuggle, MD, FAAP, FACS and Sally K. Snow, RN, BSN, CPEN, FAEN recommend that:

A pediatric trauma system be included in every emergency medical service (EMS) or hospital
States make sure appropriate child care facilities are available especially for the very young and most injured children
Pre-hospital providers such as EMS get better education on pediatric trauma
Research be increased in the field of pediatric resuscitation in cases of out-of-hospital traumatic cardiac arrest
Dedicated pediatric trauma centers continue to be developed within hospitals
Hospitals that don’t have pediatric trauma centers transfer acutely injured children to a childrens trauma center
Children injury management include an integrated public health approach from injury prevention to long term follow up including monitoring of stress
Specific transportation be used for critically injured children
Transfer among health facilities be eased for critically injured children
Organizations with pediatric trauma interest collaborate to improve national standards
Evidence based protocols be developed for the care of injured children
Children and family be evaluated and followed up for stress reaction related to the injury
Health providers be trained to recognize signs of abuse and to report them to the appropriate authorities