Help Avoid A Pediatric Emergency With Good Parenting & Common Sense

By Author: Wake Forest
Total Articles: 6
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Safety has improved. Children are much more likely to ride in a safety seat when they are young and are more likely to wear a seat belt. Children are also more likely to wear protective clothing and helmets when riding bikes, snowboarding, long boarding, and enjoying activities involving speed and hard surfaces. In football and contact sports, coaches are more cautious about head injuries.
This helps to reduce incidence of trauma but parents are still letting their children get into dangerous situations. One doctor in North Carolina who specializes in pediatric trauma sees a lot of ATV injuries where the child was not wearing protective equipment of any kind.
The same doctor unfortunately sees incidents of domestic violence where a parent commits an act of violence against a child. Then the parent exacerbates the problem by not immediately taking the child to the pediatric emergency room.
A pediatrician’s relationship with a young child differs dramatically from the relationship with ...
... an adolescent. When the child is young, there can be fun and games. But once a boy or girls enters the quasi-chaos of puberty, the tone of conversations becomes more serious.
One goal of a pediatrician during adolescence is to extract the truth from the teenager. The goal is to encourage the free flow of information so the doctor can accurately treat the patient. There’s also the issue of the relationship between the adolescent and the parent.
A parent must always be paying close attention to their teenager’s moods. Yes—adolescents are prone to occasional bouts of moodiness but it’s vital for a parent to watch for extremes. Is the teenager suddenly quiet? Is the teenager using drugs or alcohol? Is the teenager not sleeping? Has there been a significant change in weight? The goal of finding the answers to these and other questions is to prevent self-injury and suicide.
Pediatric trauma specialists would prefer a world without pediatric trauma—as they see the tragic impact that death and injury can have on a family. Parents can avoid this type of tragedy by paying close attention to the physical health and psychological wellbeing of their children.