Trick of the Trade: Blowing out the candle
How do you teach pediatric patients, especially toddlers, how to cooperate with your pulmonary exam? How do you get them to take adequately deep breaths in and out?
Paucis Verbis card: Pediatric blunt head injury
In this installment of the Paucis Verbis (In a Few Words) e-card series, the topic is Pediatric Blunt Head Trauma.
This a particularly relevant topic given the recent press and discussions about CT irradiation and the cancer risk especially in pediatric patients. It’s also relevant since Dr. Nate Kuppermann (UC Davis) just gave Grand Rounds at our UCSF-SFGH EM residency program. He first-authored a landmark 2009 Lancet article on minor head injury in kids.
PV Card: Pediatric Blunt Head Trauma
Adapted from [1]
Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.
Update June 27, 2017
We collaborated with PECARN and CanadiEM to create visual PECARN’s official decision tool.
Reference
- Kuppermann N, Holmes J, Dayan P, et al. Identification of children at very low risk of clinically-important brain injuries after head trauma: a prospective cohort study. Lancet. 2009;374(9696):1160-1170. [PubMed]
Trick of the Trade: Pediatric Distractors
Remember back in the day when we made simple toys for pediatric patients to focus on during the physical exam? Remember the inflated medical glove +/- a face drawn on it?
I just encountered a FREE iPhone application (Eye Handbook), which has a lot of useful features. I currently only use the Pediatric Fixation animations. They can be found under the “Testing” section. Kids (and often adults too!) become mesmerized and distracted by the cartoon animations.
Trick of the Trade: Style points in pediatric orthopedics
With this hot summer season in California, kids have been running around and getting into all sorts of orthopedic troubles. Monkey bars are a common culprit. In treating pediatric patients in the ED, it’s worth spending an extra few minutes on the subtle style points.
Trick of the Trade:
Splint the buddy bear
You should consider keeping a stash of stuffed teddy bears in the ED for those patients, whom you splint or cast. It is a nice touch to have the patient go home with a teddy bear with the same “injury” and splint/cast.
It’s the little touches that will make your patient’s day a little less sucky.