Journal of trauma nursing : the official journal of the Society of Trauma Nurses
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Review
Determining the Education and Research Priorities in Pediatric Trauma Nursing: A Delphi Study.
Trauma has a greater impact on morbidity and mortality than all other disease processes in the pediatric population; yet, there is a gap in the literature related to the scientific basis for educating and researching future practice. The purpose of this research study was to utilize the Delphi technique to identify the current education and research priorities for pediatric trauma nursing as described by the members of the Society of Trauma Nurses. ⋯ The pediatric trauma nursing research priorities are the following: (1) impact of nursing care on outcomes; (2) initial resuscitation; and (3) critical care. Future efforts in educational program development and research study should focus on these priorities.
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Approximately 18,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year and forced into commercial sex work. Up to 80% of victims are seen by a health care provider. In the health care setting, they rarely identify themselves as victims of human trafficking (HT), making it difficult to recognize them. ⋯ To address the problem of identifying and assisting patients who are being trafficked, some hospitals developed their own protocols. However, the wide variation in what is included on these assessment protocols makes it difficult to hold up any particular protocol as a national model. The author concludes that until more effective standardized national protocols for the identification of the HT victim within the health care settings are developed, National Human Trafficking Resource Center's method of screening should be used to help increase the degree at which patient victims are identified within the health care setting.
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Postdischarge phone calls have been shown to improve communications between patients and health care providers, potentially reducing readmission rates, medication errors, and emergency department (ED) visits. Given the complexity of social and medical issues associated with trauma, we studied the utility of an automated phone call system as a method of identifying gaps in trauma care. The Trauma Program and the Health Management and Education Department at a Level 1 academic trauma center engaged in a collaborative quality improvement effort using the CipherHealth LLC platform to provide automated phone calls to trauma patients 2-3 days after discharge. ⋯ Most calls were for symptoms (26%), follow-up appointments (22%), medication issues (21%), and discharge instruction clarification (15%). Just over 25% of trauma patients requested further clarification after discharge from the hospital. The results of this pilot indicate that further follow-up is warranted to determine whether outpatient follow-up calls in the trauma population have any impact upon mitigating complications and quality measures such as reduced ED visits, readmission, and patient safety and satisfaction.