Articles: emergency-department.
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Pediatric emergency care · Jul 2022
Self-Reported Usage of Safety Equipment Provided Through a Community Partnership Approach to Injury Prevention in the Pediatric Emergency Department.
Previous studies have shown that educational programs in conjunction with provision of free or low-cost safety equipment increases the likelihood of parents changing behaviors at home. This project surveyed caregivers in the pediatric emergency department (ED) about safety behaviors before and after provision of education and safety equipment related to medication storage, firearm storage, and drowning. ⋯ Families often report unsafe home storage of medications and firearms, which together account for a large amount of morbidity and mortality in pediatrics. Drowning risk for young children is ubiquitous in the home setting, and low rates of use of home safety devices indicates need for further education and outreach on making the home environment safe. Despite relying on self-reported behaviors and the risk of reporting bias skewing the data, the behaviors reported in the preintervention survey were still very unsafe, suggesting that children may have a much higher risk of injury in the actual home environments. The ED is traditionally thought of as a place to receive care when injuries happen, but any encounter with families should be seen as an opportunity for injury prevention messaging. Partnering with a local school of public health and other community resources can result in the establishment of a low-cost, consistent, and effective injury prevention program in the pediatric ED that reaches a large number of individuals without the added burden of additional tasks that take time away from already busy ED providers and staff.
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Many low- and middle-income countries lack resources for well-functioning emergency care systems. Emergency nurses interact with injured and critically ill patients as the first contact in many health care settings. However, insufficient training limits nurses from providing ideal emergency care. The purpose of this research was to highlight educational needs specific to nurses working in 2 emergency departments in Nairobi, Kenya. ⋯ The results of this study suggest there is a knowledge gap and educational needs among emergency nurses in Nairobi, Kenya. It identified injuries/trauma; cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological disease; and other emergencies as topics of focus areas with a high need. To address these knowledge and skills needs, a future specialty training in emergency nursing is recommended and this could be achieved through continuing professional development and short courses or postgraduate-level training.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 was declared a national emergency in the United States on March 13, 2020, at which time the Children's National Hospital Emergency Department in Washington, DC, mobilized to develop and implement a unit-based Incident Command System. Anticipating that the unique and challenging nature of this pandemic might require a large interprofessional team, emergency nurses, emergency physicians, and emergency physician assistants were placed in traditional Incident Command System roles to provide an organizational framework for the ED response. This framework served multiple purposes but most importantly it helped to efficiently streamline and coordinate communications within the emergency department, with hospital leadership and with other hospital departments. ⋯ This paper highlights a unique concept of applying the Incident Command System model to a single hospital department in a disaster scenario, using existing ED staff to function in various roles not typically held during regular operations. Given that policies and procedures can be ever-changing during a pandemic, emergency departments can implement an interprofessional incident command structure to provide a framework for communications and operational planning that allows for agility based on evolving priorities. The Children's National Hospital ED Incident Command System model established during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic can serve as a guide for other emergency departments during a disaster response.