Page 17 - Delaware Medical Journal - February 2018
P. 17
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE
As this was a retrospective study done
at one institution, there are limitations
to this research. First, because this
study was only done in N/AIDHC, the national pediatric population. Even within the state of Delaware, there are other trauma centers, which may mean that this study is underestimating the occurrence of these injuries. In addition, there are likely many other children who are injured on playgrounds but do not have injuries severe enough to warrant going to an emergency room, again underestimating the prevalence of this issue. Another important limitation with this study is with our hospital admissions rates. Patients may have been treated and discharged from the emergency room and therefore, they were not captured in the trauma registry and were not included in this study. This may mean that the injury severities we have reported may be higher than the true rate at N/AIDHC.
As a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, injury prevention is the responsibility of all trauma team members and it begins by looking into the most common causes of injury.6 Because of the high number of
REFERENCES
playground injuries, N/AIDHC’s Trauma Program created a playground safety course. The program is 25 minutes in length and focuses on children in kindergarten through (14” x 14”) to teach them how to be safe on the playground. Students learn how to make sure they are dressed properly and how to make sure the playground equipment is safe contains pictures of different pieces of equipment, and the rules are discussed for children exhibiting unsafe behaviors on the playground.
By teaching young children how to
be safe on playgrounds, the continued occurrence of these injuries can be prevented. At the completion of the educational program, a post-test is distributed. In the post-test, students are asked to identify what is unsafe
in each photo. Children are then sent home with a playground safety activity/ coloring book that reinforces what they learned. The program is new and has been introduced in summer camps and elementary schools throughout our service area.
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
■ KIRSTEN M. WOOLPERT was an IDeA Network of Biomedical Research (INBRE) Scholar with Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del. during the summer of 2017. She is finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and planning to pursue a Master’s in Public Health.
■ SEAN M. ELWELL, MSN, RN, NE-BC, TCRN, EMT is Director of Trauma and Critical Care Transport at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del. and President-Elect of the Society of Trauma Nurses.
■ JENNIFER MCCUE is the Injury Prevention Coordinator at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del.
■ STEPHEN MURPHY, MD is the Medical Director for the Trauma Program at Nemours/ Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del.
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