• Pediatrics · Dec 2000

    Pediatric office emergencies and emergency preparedness in a small rural state.

    • B W Heath, J S Coffey, P Malone, and J Courtney.
    • Department of Pediatrics, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, Vermont, USA. barry.heath@vtmednet.org
    • Pediatrics. 2000 Dec 1;106(6):1391-6.

    ObjectiveAlthough the frequency of pediatric office medical emergencies has been investigated in a retrospective manner, there have been no prospective studies. We examined how often pediatricians in a small rural state encountered medical emergencies in the office setting. This study included an in-office educational program and the donation of resuscitation equipment to study participants.Design And InterventionThirty-eight of the 40 active primary care pediatric practices in the state of Vermont participated in this study. Thirty-seven sites were surveyed retrospectively regarding office preparedness for emergencies and frequency of office emergencies. At each practice site, an educational session was provided and an office resuscitation kit was donated. Thirty-seven sites were followed prospectively for a 12-month period evaluating the incidence of office medical emergencies and the adequacy of the donated resuscitation kit.ResultsThree hundred twenty-seven individuals from 38 Vermont pediatric practice sites participated. Forty-nine percent had basic life support training and 26% had pediatric advanced life support training. Sixty-seven percent of practices had a plan for office medical emergencies. Forty-six percent of practices had called local emergency medical services providers to their offices in the past year. Emergency preparedness ranged from a high of 95% of sites with oxygen to a low of 27% of sites with intraosseous needles. The estimate of the frequency of medical emergencies was.9 (standard deviation =.8) per office in the previous 12 months. In the 12-month study, there were 28 medical emergencies reported, averaging.8 (standard deviation = 1.5) emergencies per office per year. Sixty-five percent of participating sites had no emergencies in the study. Of the emergencies reported, 75% were respiratory in origin. The donated resuscitation kits proved sufficient for all of the emergencies reported.ConclusionsSerious medical emergencies are rare events in the primary care pediatric office, occurring less than once per office per year. The most common emergency situations encountered are respiratory. All of the emergencies in this study were managed effectively using a simple and relatively inexpensive resuscitation kit. We provided an emergency preparedness program for pediatric practices in a small rural state.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.